


Asunder.

by outpastthemoat



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Adoption, AgriCorps (Star Wars), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blind Tahl, F/M, Families of Choice, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force philosophy, Gardener Qui-Gon Jinn, Living Force, New Apsolon, QuiObi Writing Discord, Tahl lives, jedi order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:07:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 46,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22823812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: Post-New Apsolon, but life takes a left turn.  Tahl lives, and she and Qui-Gon make the choice to leave the Jedi Order.  A series of vignettes relating the consequences of their choice.
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn/Tahl (Star Wars)
Comments: 290
Kudos: 287
Collections: Jedi-Friendly, favourite fics from a galaxy far far away





	1. Chapter 1

Qui-Gon cannot find his padawan.

Obi-Wan is not in his rooms, or occupying any of his usual places; the salles, the corner of the Archives where he can often be found when he is looking for quiet. In truth, Qui-Gon had not quite expected to find him so easily. Obi-Wan has been...elusive, of late. 

Since their return from New Apsolon. 

Qui-Gon quiets the quiet, insistent hum of discordance in his mind, until he can reach out into the Force and seek his padawan out. It is difficult work, to find the peace he requires. There is the white-bright brilliance, never far out of his awareness these days, that must be _her._ He wants to chase that white-bright sensation and let it overwhelm him - that seems to be all he wants to do, lately, but he pulls away regretfully instead. There will be time enough for that, he tells himself, time to explore where that brightness might take him. But now, he must look for someone else. There, the Force seems to point out, one beacon of light almost hidden underneath so much other life. The gardens, then, where Obi-Wan can hide in plain sight. Qui-Gon holds back a sigh.

He finds his padawan in the meditation gardens, deep in the heart of a courtyard, behind a crumbling stone wall grown over with blossoming ly-ly vines. Obi-Wan is sitting cross-legged on the soft springy groundcover, a meditation posture. But instead of sitting with his back straight, he is leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He is rubbing his leg absently. 

Obi-Wan looks up when Qui-Gon approaches. He offers his master a half-hearted smile.

“You’ve come to tell me, then,” Obi-Wan says. 

Qui-Gon lowers himself until he is leaning up against the stone wall by his padawan’s side. Ly-ly blossoms brush up against his ear. He deliberately keeps his voice light. 

“Oh, have you had a vision of the future? What have I come to tell you, my padawan?”

Obi-Wan’s face flushes. “You’ve come to tell me that you’re leaving the Order.” 

There is no recrimination in his voice, only a heavy resignation. Qui-Gon feels his heart sink. So his padawan has noticed, then. Well, Obi-Wan has always been observant. He should have expected nothing less. He has been so occupied, lately. He is ashamed. I should have paid more attention to him, he thinks unhappily. He has needed me, too. I should have known that.

He hesitates, unwilling to confirm Obi-Wan’s prediction. But his apprentice is right. “I am sorry, padawan,” he offers, as gently as he can.

He does not ask his master _Why_. He must know why, already, even though Qui-Gon has not given voice to his own emotional turmoil over the past few weeks. Instead, Obi-Wan drops his head into his arms. 

His voice, when it finally emerges, is plaintive. “Must you?” 

How can he make this choice? How can he break his padawan’s heart, and part of his own - the separate, distinct part of his heart where Obi-Wan has lived and slept and breathed for five years. 

And yet he must. It is the only path forward that he can see.

_Don’t leave me,_ Tahl had whispered on their return to Coruscant, and how could he refuse whatever she requested of him?

“I must,” Qui-Gon acknowledges. He does not quite know where to look. He senses that Obi-Wan would rather not be seen too closely, in this moment, so he turns his gaze to his own hands. He tries to find the right words, to explain his reasons. Obi-Wan surely deserves that. The truth is the least of what Qui-Gon owes him. Only there is no reasonable explanation to offer. Qui-Gon is following his heart in this matter.

“You are young, Obi-Wan,” he says softly, “and I know you may not understand. But - it is as though a door has opened, one that I never had thought that I would open for me - and having stepped through it, I cannot turn back. I have changed, padawan, over these past years, in no small part because of you, and all you have taught me. And what I have learned about myself, I cannot unknow.”

“Aren’t Jedi supposed to let things go?”

Qui-Gon considers his words carefully. “I am afraid, my padawan, that I cannot, in this case.”

“You mean you _won’t,”_ says Obi-Wan, finally lifting his head out from under his arms. “It's not that you _can’t_ \- you just _won’t_.”

Qui-Gon folds his fingers together. “If I could have let this go, I would have,” Qui-Gon says. “For your sake, if nothing else. And for Bant’s, for my other responsibilities. Neither of us have made this choice lightly.”

Obi-Wan makes a small, choked-off noise, terrible in its very quietness, and it wrenches Qui-Gon’s heart like nothing else could have. How can I do this to him? Qui-Gon wonders again. How can I do this to my padawan, who depends on me so? I made a promise to him that I can no longer keep. 

“I do not deserve your forgiveness, Obi-Wan,” he says quietly. “But I will ask for it, nonetheless. I am - I am so very sorry for the grief I have brought you.”

Obi-Wan does not say anything in reply to this. He simply sits with his head in his arms, silent and unmoving. Qui-Gon places his broad hand on the back of the boy’s head. Obi-Wan does not move away from his touch, but neither does he acknowledge it. Qui-Gon carefully strokes his thumb across the nape of his neck, smoothing the fine, close-cropped hair there.

When Obi-Wan finally speaks, his voice is quite composed. 

“I know I could never change your mind. I’m not - I could never be enough to keep you here, if you are determined to go. But please. Take me with you.”

It is the _Please_ that brings Qui-Gon nearer to breaking than he had anticpated. He has never known his padawan to ask for anything from him. Obi-Wan is not begging - his dignified padawan would never beg him for anything, Qui-Gon knows. But he also senses that Obi-Wan is as close to begging as he has perhaps ever come. He settles his hand in a solid grip on Obi-Wan’s shoulder and wills himself to be firm. 

“I cannot,” Qui-Gon says. “Obi-Wan, you do not know what you are asking for. Becoming a knight, that is all you have ever wanted. I cannot take that from you. You have your entire life ahead of you. You should not give it up for this.”

Obi-Wan shakes his head, his chin squared with stubbornness. “I don’t want it anymore. Being a Jedi doesn’t mean anything. Not without you.”

Shocked, Qui-Gon protests, “You can’t mean that.”

“I did. I do.”

He softens, despite himself. “It wouldn’t be right, padawan.”

“It would be right for me,” Obi-Wan argues. "I know it would. I'd go with you anywhere."

Qui-Gon shakes his head. He cannot allow this, for Obi-Wan’s sake. The boy does not know what is best for him, he tells himself. “You must stay. You will have a new master, you will become a great Jedi. I know this is the right path for you.”

Neither of them say anything for a while. Obi-Wan plucks at the starry grassflowers by his boot. “That’s what you want for me.”

He dips his head in acknowledgement. “Yes."

Obi-Wan takes a breath, then releases it. “You’ll say goodbye, before you go?” 

“I promise you, I won’t leave without saying goodbye,” Qui-Gon answers. He feels at a loss, suddenly. There ought to be something else to say, some words to convey his own sense of loss, his own grief for all that he is preparing to leave behind. But all he can think to say is _You’ll be all right without me,_ meaningless to Obi-Wan, who will see through his words and know that Qui-Gon is only comforting himself with that thought. 

He settles instead for saying, “I never meant to cause you pain, padawan. That was not my intention.”

“I know,” Obi-Wan says. If he had not been looking, Qui-Gon might have missed the way the corner of Obi-Wan’s mouth is not steady. But he is looking, and he sees the way his padawan’s chin is trembling. “But you always do anyway.”

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His need for attachment. His desire for closeness, companionship; his instinct to reach out for connection, for the living Force. Qui-Gon has always felt as though these cravings are a defect of his, onehis master had tried to polish away though intensive tutelage and rigid adherence to the Code. 
> 
> It is your weakness, my padawan, his master had remarked. It will be your undoing, if you allow it to continue to grow. 

The Temple is a vast place, with ornate halls and grand rooms, and corridors that lead to expansive gardens, private corners with softly cascading fountains. Qui-Gon can still walk the corridors and discover hidden alcoves, new to him, even though he is no longer a young man. He has never felt as though the Temple is not large enough for him. Until now. 

He finds himself pacing through the corridors, absently seeking out his old favorite places: The waterfalls in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, the lakeshore where he and Tahl had spent the idle moments of their youth; the Grand Salle, where he had once watched Obi-Wan fight in a tournament - he had always supposed he would see Obi-Wan spar there again, as a senior padawan, and then as a knight. Now he realizes for the first time, with a sense of shock, that he will likely never see Obi-Wan as a knight. 

The fruit trees of the kitchen greenhouse, the softly glowing lights of the Archives. Qui-Gon realizes with a start that he is already looking at the Temple, the only home he has ever known, with the eyes of a stranger. 

Then he finds himself at the rock gardens he had so often visited in his own padawan days, tracing lines in the sand with his fingers and trying to understand his own unhappiness. The rock gardens, with the pebbles laid out in carefully structured patterns and the dunes of finely-ground sand, were meant as a meditation on solitude, designed to simulate isolation. His master had sent him there often, to meditate on his need for connection.

His need for attachment. His desire for closeness, companionship; his instinct to reach out for connection, for the living Force. Qui-Gon has always felt as though these cravings are a defect of his, onehis master had tried to polish away though intensive tutelage and rigid adherence to the Code. 

_ It is your weakness, my padawan,  _ his master had remarked.  _ It will be your undoing, if you allow it to continue to grow.  _

And yet in the rock garden, Qui-Gon had never felt isolated, as his master had intended. He was alone, true, but the living Force had been there too, in the solid weight of the boulders, in the thousands upon thousands grains of sand. He had scooped up handfuls of sand, letting the grains drain out of his closed fist.

He had never learned the lesson.

Here in the rock gardens, Qui-Gon closes his eyes and finally allows himself to let go of all that has weighed him down for these past few weeks. His bewilderment,  _ how has this happened, _ Tahl’s close brush with death, such a near thing. He shudders, remembering. His own guilt and shame, that flood him every time he remembers the look on Obi-Wan’s face when he told him his decision. 

And yet.

Sand slips out of his grasp.

Qui-Gon finally dares to glimpse ahead, at the possibilities that have slowly begun to reveal themselves to him, now that he has dared to take this first step. For the first time, he is asking himself what he needs. What he would like to have. 

As a Jedi, he has never wanted for a home, a community, a family. There has always been a place for him here, and food, and purpose. Now - there is all the galaxy to choose from, overwhelming him with the vastness of choice. 

He thinks of the quiet clatter of a meal prepared in a miniscule kitchen, bumping elbows and shoulders to slice the fruit and to cook some meat. Light coming in from an open window, cast with a greenish shade from vines growing thickly over the window frame. 

And  _ her _ . 

Tahl’s laughter, the gleam of humor still evident in her green and gold eyes despite all that has happened to her. The softness of her hands as her palm slides across his shoulders. The scent of her hair.

He is filled with such joy that he is almost afraid. 

  
  
  
  


He goes to the Council alone to announce his decision. Tahl will go to the Council in her own time, and announce hers. For now, they still travel seperate paths. But soon - the pace of his heart quickens. 

“Sorry I am that you will leave us,” says Yoda. Qui-Gon bows his head. He cannot somehow look the old master in the eye. There is no censure in his voice. Yet Qui-Gon can keenly feel how his leaving will affect the Order. His responsibilities will now fall to other Jedi, his talents and skills will no longer go to the greater good. 

“I cannot remain true to myself and remain a Jedi,” Qui-Gon tells the Council heavily. “I would forever be pulled in two seperate directions. My judgement would be compromised. Better to make this choice now, as difficult as it is, than to linger in my decision and find myself in a position where I could not act in an unbiased manner.”

That moment has already come to pass, he knows, though he does not tell the Council this. 

There is no sense of surprise amongst the other Councilors. It is rare, it is true, for a Knight or Master to leave once they achieve that rank. But hardly unheard of. And, Qui-Gon can admit, the Council must have supposed that if any current Jedi should be anticipated to leave the order, it would perhaps be him, the Jedi who has never quite fit in; with his rigid and unyielding master, with his past failures, the Master who has spent much of his career walking alone. 

Perhaps his decision was something the Council has already foreseen. Perhaps he has been walking the line of the Code for some time, and only now has he realized it. 

Mace simply nods his acceptance of Qui-Gon’s decision. Qui-Gon will not be pressured to reevaluate his decision, the Council will not recriminate him for this. He understands - and yet he feels the shame, the guilt regardless. Something to meditate on, later, his instinctive response to his own choice. 

“And what are your plans, upon leaving the Order?” Mace asks. 

He closes his eyes briefly, and he is called back to the moment he had imagined in the rock garden. The brightness of the sunlight. The green of the vines. Tahl's touch, leaving him breathless. And in that moment, Qui-Gon knows, for once, exactly what he wants.

“I would only ask,” he says, “for a piece of earth.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He had been prepared for many possibilities when he had informed the Council of his decision: Recrimination, censure, renunciation. 
> 
> Qui-Gon has not been prepared for kindness.

For a lifetime of service, there is not much left to settle. 

A Jedi has few possessions. The scant furniture in his quarters will remain at the Temple. And he has few enough personal belongings, sorting through the items he will give away and the ones he will keep is the work of only an hour. 

Qui-Gon fills his pack with the strange assortment of civilian clothes he has recently purchased, along with his few keepsakes. He will be allowed to retain his lightsaber as a courtesy, since he has achieved the rank of master. An initiate or padawan leaving the order would have been asked to relinquish their lightsaber.

He chooses to pack the blanket that Tahl had given him once, long ago in their youth, a gray woven blanket shot through with silver and indigo threads. Inside the blanket he carefully tucks the tea pot he had once found in a market on Alderaan, and his canisters of blended teas. He selects a few of his more prized plants and places them with great care in specimen tubes. The rest of the plants will go to the Temple horticulturalists, and find a new life in the meditation gardens and conservatories. And as he packs his belongings, he looks for the right item to leave with Obi-Wan. 

He has so few possessions, and yet he cannot seem to find anything to suit his padawan. The student he is preparing to leave behind. He would like to give Obi-Wan something of himself, as a reminder of their years together, all the lessons taught and learned. 

He considers many things, from a rough carving he had once made from a piece of sandstone to a rare book of poetry. But even when everything else is packed and awaiting his departure, he cannot make a decision. Qui-Gon can only conclude that such a gift would only be a reminder of all that he had once offered Obi-Wan, all that he has now taken away.

I took him as my padawan, he thinks, distraught. I offered to see him through to knighthood, and now I have broken that promise. There is nothing I can give him to make up for going back on my word. Nothing that would not be merely a reminder of all that he has lost.

He sits alone in his room, emptied of all the belongings that had once made these quarters his own. 

He can only take the ache in his chest for so long before he finds he needs  _ her _ .

\---

It is late by Temple hours when he makes his way to Tahl’s quarters. The halls are silent. Qui-Gon’s footsteps are measured and slow.

They have not spent much time together since their return from New Apsolon. There has been so much to do. And beyond that, he has felt—exposed, somehow. To look at Tahl, and to know that he has chosen her over everything else in the galaxy. That he has looked at this galaxy, rife with pain and suffering, and decided that a life with her was of more importance. 

To look at Tahl and know that she has made the same choice for him. 

And yet he has never done anything more than take her hand in his. 

More intimate than any touch is to know how they have chosen each other. He has revealed his most secret wish, the innermost desire of his heart, not only to her but to the universe.

Perhaps this is what makes him hesitate to go to her now. All of the Temple is now aware of how he has chosen her, and there is no power in the galaxy that can place that knowledge back in his solitary keeping. 

He hesitates at the threshold of her room when she palms open the door. 

“This is strange,” he admits, and for the first time in these past weeks of fear and tension and agony, he hears her laughter surfacing. 

“Strange is an understatement, Qui-Gon Jinn,” she murmurs. “For stars’ sake, what are you doing here at this hour?”

“I hadn’t seen you,” he says, feeling suddenly uncertain. Unsure. “There has been so much to do, so many decisions to make. And you have always been my center. I could not find peace tonight, without you.”

Tahl’s hand moves restlessly to rest on the hollow of her throat, and she taps her fingers restlessly against her collarbone. Then her fingers still. “Come with me,” she says.

\---

At the lakeshore, Tahl takes off her boots and sinks her toes in the pale golden sand. “It is strange to think that after tomorrow, this will not be my home.”

He settles on the warm sand beside her, wrapping his arms around his knees. “I feel the same,” Qui-Gon murmurs. He sighs. “We are no longer young. Perhaps this idea—leaving all that we know, leaving behind our lives, our work—perhaps this is nothing but folly.”

Tahl snorts. “Are you saying that we are too old for this?”

“Only myself,” he protests. “I am well past fifty, Tahl. Perhaps I am too old to start a new life.”

“That means I must be old as well,” Tahl says cheerfully. “As we are the same age.”

Qui-Gon reaches out a hand to brush against the soft cattails that grow around the edges of the lake. “How is Bant?” he asks, and Tahl's smile weakens.

“Bant is kind, as always,” Tahl says wryly. “She has assisted me in packing up my china, though I rather think she would prefer to shatter every cup. And she has informed me that she will never speak to me again if I leave her now, only to almost perish on a remote planet again.”

Qui-Gon feels a tremor run through his heart. He had come so close to losing her on New Apsolon. They all had. For a brief moment, he considers what the galaxy would be like without Tahl, without her spirit and courage, her kindness and strength. 

At this moment, he only feels grateful that he will never be asked to leave her side again.

Tahl says thoughtfully, “Though I am not sure that I believe her. Bant has a soft heart. She may forgive me yet, in thirty or forty years, perhaps.”

He has to smile. “Oh dear. That is quite a long time.”

She nudges his leg with one bare foot. “And Obi-Wan?”

“He is so polite, that I feel as though we have only just been briefly introduced at some formal diplomatic event.”

Tahl laughs at that. 

“Will our padawans forgive us, do you suppose?” he asks. He cannot help the mournful note that has stolen into his voice, though he regrets it. She will hear it, and think that he has changed his mind.

“I think so, in time,” Tahl says consideringly. She has turned her head to the side, listening, perhaps, to the sound of the waterfall. “But then again, if we crave forgiveness, then we should start with ourselves. We could not make the choice that we have made without feeling regret, sadness, a sense of loss for all that we are giving up. But if we allow ourselves to dwell only on those emotions, we will never have the chance to discover what joys might be waiting for us around this bend in the road.”

He bends his head low. Though he cannot bear to acknowledge it, he knows that Tahl is right.

She allows him to sit in silence for some time. Tahl dips her hand in the lake, her fingers combing through the smooth water. Then at last she speaks again.

“Do you remember the first time we came here together?” 

“Of course,” he responds, as lightly as he can. “You beat me to the top of the cliffs, and then we swam in the water.”

“That was so long ago,” Tahl muses. “We have come here many times since then. And now—this may be the last moment we spent here.”

“Did you ever suppose, back then, that one day you would leave the Order?” Qui-Gon asks carefully. He wants to know the answer—or does he? He has not yet dared to ask Tahl about the strength of her conviction that leaving the Order is the right choice. But he feels now that if he does not take the chance, he will never know. Tomorrow they will have left the Temple, and their lives will have changed irrevocably. Any answer she might give him after that will be permanently altered by the decision they have made together. 

“No,” Tahl says. “But I knew the first time I sat here here by your side, that my future would be entwined with yours. I think I have always known that.”

He sits beside her on the lakeshore, watching the water rush down from the cliffs overhead and the cattails move slowly in the shallow water by their feet. Whatever is to become of them, he only knows that he is thankful that she has chosen to walk this path with him.

As far as where they will go, he does not know. How they will earn their living, where they will live. 

There is only the here and now: Himself and Tahl, and the Force between them. 

\---

Master Windu appears at his quarters just past seventh bell the following morning. He places a datapad in Qui-Gon’s unsuspecting hand.

“What’s this?” Qui-Gon asks, bemused.

“The Force works in mysterious ways,” Mace says gravely. “And the Order takes care of its own. You are valued among us, not for your skills and knowledge, but also for your adherence to the light. You may choose to leave the Order, but you are still a Jedi. We will stand behind you in this.”

Qui-Gon is already shaking his head, unable to accept what Mace might be offering. But Mace holds up his hand to forestall him. “Just take a look,” he says.

When Qui-Gon activates the datapad, he finds a job description for a civilian position in the Corps:  Groundskeeper for an inactive Jedi Temple on a remote planet.  This position, the data crystal informs him, comes with an annual salary and a cottage with some acreage. 

He feels a sting in his eyes. He had been prepared for many possibilities when he had informed the Council of his decision: Recrimination, censure,  renunciation . 

Qui-Gon has not been prepared for kindness.

“Here’s your piece of earth, Qui-Gon.” He thinks Mace might be smiling. “May you make the most of it.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His old life is over, and his new life is beginning.
> 
> Qui-Gon stands at the Temple loading platform, awaiting the transport that will carry them away from Coruscant. Tahl is nearby with Bant, their heads bent close together, talking together in quiet voices. Tahl’s hand rests lightly on her padawan’s shoulder. Qui-Gon alone can see how Bant is blinking back tears.

His old life is over, and his new life is beginning.

Qui-Gon stands at the Temple loading platform, awaiting the transport that will carry them away from Coruscant. Tahl is nearby with Bant, their heads bent close together, talking together in quiet voices. Tahl’s hand rests lightly on her padawan’s shoulder. Qui-Gon alone can see how Bant is blinking back tears.

Qui-Gon adjusts the single pack he carries across his shoulders. He has been watching the doors that lead inside the Temple. The transport will be arriving soon. And still his padawan has not come. 

I have brought this down on myself, he thinks with resignation. Perhaps this is what I deserve. Qui-Gon finds that he cannot find fault with Obi-Wan, if he has decided that his former master is unworthy of a last farewell. 

There is so much Qui-Gon wishes to tell him.

Then the transport approaches, touching down on the landing platform. Tahl bends over Bant, holding her close. Then they break apart, and Bant steps back. Tahl moves closer to him, but he cannot tear his eyes from the door. Qui-Gon feels his heart sink. 

Tahl places her hand on his arm. “It’s time to go,” she says quietly. 

“I know,” he sighs. But he cranes his neck for one last look.

Her voice is for him alone. “I am sorry, Qui-Gon.” He can only nod silently. Tahl tightens her grasp on his arm, and Qui-Gon falls into step just behind her.

They have almost reached the transport when he hears Obi-Wan’s voice. 

“Master!” 

Obi-Wan is hurrying towards him, his cloak catching the wind and unfurling behind him. Qui-Gon turns back at once.

“Obi-Wan,” he says with relief.

Obi-Wan stops in front of him. “Master,” he says again, breathlessly. “I was afraid we wouldn’t make it in time.”

Qui-Gon’s eyes move past him to see Master Krell standing just beyond Obi-Wan. He stiffens in surprise. So his padawan has been reassigned already, and to Master Krell. Qui-Gon would never have chosen him to train Obi-Wan.  But it is not his place to make decisions regarding Obi-Wan anymore. He has given up that responsibility. 

He had hoped to say farewell to his padawan in private. But like so much else, it is out of his hands. And a Jedi must accept what he cannot control. 

But Qui-Gon is no longer a Jedi.

“Master Krell,” he addresses the master. “May I have a moment with Obi-Wan?”

Obi-Wan looks at him gratefully, and Qui-Gon feels his heart sink further. He has worked hard over the course of their relationship to learn to be the master that Obi-Wan needs, to decipher what Obi-Wan cannot bring himself to ask for, and then to provide it. He cannot see Master Krell offering the same understanding. 

Perhaps it is for the best, he reasons with himself, Obi-Wan must learn to speak for himself. Better to let him learn how to stand alone, while he still has the support of the Temple and Council behind him. 

Obi-Wan does not ask to go with him again. He had scarcely expected Obi-Wan to ask the first time, but he cannot imagine that Obi-Wan would take such a risk again. The boy must have felt very badly, then, to make such a request. 

Instead Obi-Wan reaches into his pocket and brings out a small, narrow package, neatly wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. “This is for you.”

Qui-Gon shakes his head, touched. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I know. But I wanted to do something for you. To have something from me.” Obi-Wan shifts his weight. “You don’t have to open it now.”

“Obi-Wan—” he begins.

“I am happy for you,” Obi-Wan says in a rush. “Truly, master. I wish every happiness for you.” 

Obi-Wan is smiling, but his voice cracks on his last words. How like his padawan, Qui-Gon finds himself thinking.  No matter what it means for himself, Obi-Wan is trying to support him. 

“You are very kind,” he says. “Thank you, padawan.” 

Obi-Wan’s smile turns bittersweet. “I’m not your padawan anymore.”

He lets his hand rest heavily on Obi-Wan’s shoulder. “You will always be my padawan,” Qui-Gon tells him. “That will never change. I will always care for you, think of you, worry over you, miss you.” 

“I have treasured our time together,” he says. “I can scarcely conceive of who I would have been, without having known you. You have changed so much for me. Never doubt that, Obi-Wan.”

Qui-Gon reaches into a pocket of his tunic and places in Obi-Wan’s hand a pale blue oval, no larger than a finger’s width across. A thrantil egg, so small for such a large, powerful creature, fossilized and discovered by Qui-Gon long ago. He has collected these small things all his life, rocks and fossils, geodes and shells. Tahl has always teasingly called these items his treasury, saying that Qui-Gon valued these gifts of nature more than any Republic currency. He had searched through these items the night before, looking for one that could speak for him, a treasure that would help Obi-Wan understand all that he has meant to Qui-Gon.

“I hope you have felt cared for- I have always tried to care for you to the best of my ability. Though there were times when I thought you deserved a master who could offer you far more than what little I could manage.” His throat closes up, quite against his own will. He is helplessly unable to speak of all that Obi-Wan has meant to him.  He hopes Obi-Wan will understand.

Obi-Wan’s fingers close around the fossil. “I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else for a master. Only you.” 

But Qui-Gon cannot say anything in reply. He pulls Obi-Wan against his chest and rests his cheek against the boy’s head. 

It is Obi-Wan who draws back first. “May the Force be with you,” says Obi-Wan. His voice is steady. Qui-Gon can tell how hard he is working to be so calm. To not make this harder on Qui-Gon. 

He must close his eyes briefly, so that Obi-Wan will not see the struggle on his face. 

“May the Force be with you.” 

\----

And then they are alone.

They stand together at the transport’s observation deck, watching the Temple grow smaller with distance. Side by side. He watches the small figure on the landing platform until Obi-Wan disappears out of his vision. 

He feels Tahl reach silently for his hand. She grasps his fingers tightly, and he leans into her warmth. She is a steadying presence to him, always.

“Any regrets so far?” Tahl murmurs.

Qui-Gon looks at her, really looks at her. Tahl is wearing a simple tunic and leggings, a short jacket with a collar that covers her neck. Her golden skin is glistening with sweat, and her hair is disheveled. But she is smiling. That gives him heart.

She has always given him heart, he realizes, she has always pushed him to do better, try harder, go farther. On her encouragement alone, he rather thinks he might be able to take on the universe single-handedly.

“I feel like I’m leaving a part of my heart behind,” he confesses to Tahl.

She blows out a breath that causes strands of her dark hair to fly up. “I feel the same,” she admits. Her smile quirks, a corner turning upward. “And yet-”

She moves closer to him. Qui-Gon stands still. She places her hands at his waist, then moves them to run along his shoulders. “We have each other.”

“There is that.”

“Perhaps we can make this work,” she muses. Her fingers ghost over his lips. She must be able to tell he is smiling. 

“I suspect there is that possibility.”

“We have always made a good team," she says thoughtfully.

He agrees. “We can face this together.”

He takes her hands and holds them lightly. He can feel her confusion in the quizzical way she tilts her head. “I could not ask you before. But now I am a free man. And I can finally tell you all that is in my heart.  Tahl, I have loved you all the days I have lived so far, and I will love you all the days I have left to live. Will you marry me?”

He hears her quick intake of breath. “You have always been the only one in the galaxy who could ever surprise me,” she says. 

He finds that he is laughing, quite unable to do anything else. “It is an honor and a privilege.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There’s no furniture, Tahl,” he says reluctantly. “Not even a bed.”
> 
> “Oh dear,” Tahl says. “That’s a bit ascetic, even for ex-Jedi.”

Qui-Gon describes this new world to her. He is a man of few words, yet he takes the time to paint a vivid picture, telling her of all the things he has noticed. The people, the architexture, the certain way the light falls at dusk on a planet with two suns. 

Quite a contradiction, Tahl muses. Qui-Gon is not a talkative man, yet he spins a tale out like an ancient storyteller.

They rent an outdated speeder near the spaceport, and Qui-Gon loads it up with various provisions and basic necessities before they ride out to the Temple, a day’s journey to the north. All the while, Qui-Gon tells her what he sees. 

Their new home is green and rugged, Qui-Gon tells her, with steep ridges and slanting valleys. The groundskeeper’s cottage sits at the foot of a mountain. There is farmland in the valley below, and a small village, though the world is not an unpopulated one; there are larger cities to the east of their home. 

The cottage, he says when they arrive, is built out of a white rock native to the planet. He is already circling round the cottage and the lands before Tahl has unloaded the landspeeder. 

He comes back to help her bring their packs inside. 

“It’s quite primitive,” Qui-Gon tells her.

“Oh?” Tahl says. “And what does that mean, pray tell?”

He hesitates, for the first time since they landed planetside. “I don’t know exactly how to describe it.”

She raises a single eyebrow at him. “Try.”

“There’s no furniture, Tahl,” he says reluctantly. “Not even a bed.”

“Oh dear,” Tahl says. “That’s a bit ascetic, even for ex-Jedi.”

“We’ll have to see what we can find in the village tomorrow.”

“I’m sure we can make do,” she reassures him. “Both of us have certainly weathered far worse in our time.”

But Qui-Gon had neglected to mention that the roof also leaked, and that the floorboards were rotten though. Tahl discovers one when she takes a chance step in a room that might have once held cooking facilities and finds herself buried in splinters to her ankle, and the other when they wake the next morning, still damp and irritated from a restless slumber on the nest of cloaks they had spread out to create a makeshift bed.

“Tahl, I am over fifty years old,” Qui-Gon said plaintively. “And I feel every day of it, this morning.”

When Tahl begins to unpack her belongings, they discover that her collection of Aurean ceramics that Bant had so considerately helped her wrap have all been broken in the travel.

Qui-Gon’s voice is heavy with sorrow. “Tahl, I am so sorry.”

Tahl blinks back tears. She does not understand how she can feel such sorrow over mere things. After all, she is- was- has always been a Jedi. 

But she has never had many lovely things - these were the one beautiful thing she had allowed herself, in her life as a Jedi. She had saved her small stipend to be able to afford a cup here, a plate there, slowly building her collection over the years. Aurean ceramics were famed for their loveliness; she had cherished the fragile beauty of the pieces even after she had lost her vision. She had still been able to run her finger over the rim of a tea bowl and remember how much joy they had brought her.

Qui-Gon silently helps her take out each piece of shattered cup and bowl, reaching inside the pack carefully so that Tahl will avoid slicing up her hands. She can sense his unhappiness for her sake, his worry that he has brought her along on a fool’s errand, that he has been selfish-

“Stop that,” Tahl snaps, and she can feel his startled surprise. “It doesn’t matter,” she tells him. 

He does not argue with her. 

\---

The ancient Temple is built into the side of the mountain. Tahl can sense its presence long before they work open the doors, the aura of ancient, vast serenity. It is not the same sense as the Temple on Coruscant, verdant with life and purpose, and neither does this Temple carry the faintly dangerous edge of the other Temples she has visited in her work as an archivist, like the Temple on Lothal that had chilled her to the bone when she had stepped foot in the halls alongside Master Nu. 

This Temple has the aura of a wild place, overgrown. No one has used this Temple in centuries, but before, it was home to a small praxium of Jedi who used it as a repository of knowledge. It takes the both of them to work open the Temple doors, build out of heavy lapis stone and ornate with carvings of vines and stars. 

“This is a good place,” she tells him. “It feels like...waiting. Not closed, not all the way. Just waiting.”

“It wanted to be found,” Qui-Gon murmurs close by her ear.

They sink into meditation together in front of the doors. Tahl finds herself reaching instinctively towards the brightness she has sensed inside her own mind for the past few weeks. She touches the bright whiteness, curious and half-fearful, and she is pulled in: A fierce ache of worry and love, quiet adoration. A restrained love that is so much a part of him that he could not know himself without it, but beneath that, a wild longing-

Tahl pulls back, overwhelmed. Qui-Gon is holding her hands. 

“The Temple is open,” he says quietly, then pulls her to her feet. 

They walk through the halls, their boots sounding foreign and intrusive against this Temple’s solitude, Qui-Gon speaking in a low voice and describing each room they pass through: The grand hallway, the branching corridors to other rooms, the courtyard open to the outside with tangles of vines overgrowing the stonework. 

Tahl breathes in the scent of water and stone, and when she first steps inside the old archives she begins to cough from the dust in the air. 

Qui-Gon is the first to speak in this hallowed room. “The archives are still intact,” he notes. “You’ll have a great deal of work to do.”

Tahl is running her hands over scrolls, tablets, crystals, holocrons. So much knowledge left here, she muses. Who knows what she might find.

“Good,” she replies. 

\---

Tahl works in the archives through the rest of the afternoon. Qui-Gon is more restless. He disappears while she is still in the beginning stages of organizing her indexing, citing a need to investigate the Temple’s gardens.

He returns in the late afternoon. He brushes a finger against her loose hair, and she startles.

“You’ve returned.”

Qui-Gon, when he tilts his head down to accept her absent-minded kiss, tastes of dust. 

  
  


Tahl wakes partially out of her trance. She has been sorting through the genuine paper archives, using her handheld projector to scan each item and catalog its contents; she will convert them to data at a later date. Another projector is reading out loud the contents of one of the archive’s indices; she has been listening with half an ear. 

“I have noticed that we are alone,” Qui-Gon begins, taking her hand and tracing lines absently into her palm.

“Have you?” she murmurs distractedly.

“There is not much to do.”

“Perhaps you should meditate,” she teases him.

“On what should I mediate, then?” he asks, falling into the same familiar pattern of humor they have always shared between them.

His fingers on her skin. Tahl can feel herself shiver. She says flippantly, “My hands.”

“That would be a good start,” Qui-Gon agrees.

“Or perhaps my hair. I have heard that it is considered rather pleasant to look at.”

“I quite agree.”

“Or my eyes. Please do tell me if you should happen to notice how alluring and attractive they are.”

His voice softens. “I have always loved your eyes, Tahl. I have dreamed of them many times.”

She feels her heart flutter, despite her teasing words. “Then I suppose no further meditation on the subject is necessary.”

“On the contrary,” Qui-Gon counters. “I find the subject to be immensely rewarding and continually offers new meaning and insight.”

“And what conclusions have you come to?”

His hand is tracing the line of her cheek, then the corner of her mouth. His rough fingers do not shy away from the raised scars that pass over her eyes. “That you are the loveliest being I have ever seen.”

“Is that all? Perhaps further meditation _is_ necessary.”

“And that I should very much like to kiss you,” he continues. “That is, if you are not too busy.”

“Perhaps _I_ should meditate on the matter,” Tahl says wickedly.

She can sense Qui-Gon’s keen look, directed at her. He is not put off by her deflections. “Hmm. Then again, perhaps meditation isn’t such a terrible idea.”

She touches his cheek, lets his beard scratch against her palm. She sighs. “Qui-Gon-”

“You’re afraid,” he states plainly.

Perceptive man, Tahl thinks wryly. Well, he is right. He knows her too well.

Qui-Gon is leaning towards her, bent over her protectively. For so long, she had fought against his instinct to protect her, to shield her against the galaxy’s unkindness. And now Tahl wonders how she could go on without it. 

“What are you afraid of?” he wonders.

So many things. She begins to name them, one by one, slowly at first and then the words come faster, almost bitter in her haste. “Making a mistake I cannot take back or fix. Hurting the ones I care for. Hurting _you_. Being in pain. Not having control of my life, being powerless to help myself. Dying, before I even have begun to live.”

Tahl cannot help but wince. She knows how her words will hurt him.

“You were afraid to die," he realizes. "On New Apsolon.” She can hear the scarely-muted grief in his voice.

She takes a shuddering breath. “I want to live, Qui-Gon. I want to feel alive. I want to laugh and cry and fight with you, I want to feel everything. I want to have something of my own, before I pass back into the Force. How could I remain a Jedi and want all this?”

He wraps his arms around her waist. Pulls her close to his chest, so that her head is tucked underneath his chin. “What can I do?”

How has she lived for so long without this?

“Just hold me,” Tahl breathes into his chest.

“All right,” he says. “I can do that.”

\---

It is days later when Tahl can hear his footsteps halt in the threshold of the cottage. Then the footsteps go quiet. She can sense his surprise. 

“What are you doing?” Qui-Gon asks. 

Tahl is sitting on the floor of their cottage, surrounded by piles of carefully sorted ceramic fragments. She carefully feels her way down the sharp edge of a broken cup. She will brush on the golden epoxy, join the pieces together, and set the cup aside to dry. 

“Mending,” she answers.

He sits down beside her and picks up the shards of a plate.

  
  
  
  



	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He spends glorious hours and days exploring the range of gardens, marveling over the silent fountains emptied of water and filled with leaf litter and fallen fronds from the trees, the stone pavers that lead from one room to another, the columns that balance the stone arches and palisades, the ruined walls that encircle the inner sanctum. 
> 
> There is a quiet in the Temple gardens that he cannot become accustomed to, despite the hours he spends there. It is entirely unlike Coruscant. Here, there are no lines of traffic crowding the sky, there are no children running through the halls, there are no scholars speaking to each other in the archives. 
> 
> There is only the wind, breaking through the trees every now and then, and Qui-Gon will find himself holding his breath in order to avoid breaking the silence. 

There are gardens at the Temple, courtyards open to the sunlight that have been running wild in the centuries since a Jedi had last tended them. 

Qui-Gon keeps a machete strapped to his belt to cut through the tangle of vines and undergrowth that has crept across the paths over time. This is how he finds that the courtyards lead to other cloisters, an ever-increasing maze of rooms. Qui-Gon maps the gardens in his mind, cataloging each alcove and corner as he discovers them.

He spends glorious hours and days exploring the range of gardens, marveling over the silent fountains emptied of water and filled with leaf litter and fallen fronds from the trees, the stone pavers that lead from one room to another, the columns that balance the stone arches and palisades, the ruined walls that encircle the inner sanctum. 

There is a quiet in the Temple gardens that he cannot become accustomed to, despite the hours he spends there. It is entirely unlike Coruscant. Here, there are no lines of traffic crowding the sky, there are no children running through the halls, there are no scholars speaking to each other in the archives. 

There is only the wind, breaking through the trees every now and then, and Qui-Gon will find himself holding his breath in order to avoid breaking the silence. 

There is a nest in one of the courtyards where a pair of birds have laid their eggs. Qui-Gon cannot get a close look at them, for the pair are quite wild and startle away with a quick fluttering of wings at his approach. It is the first sound he has heard here.

He is the first living being to walk through these gardens in centuries.

\---

There is another garden waiting for him when he leaves the Temple, the small field behind the cottage where he is working to cultivate food for their table. He has planted tubers and root vegetables, the spicy, broad-leafed greens Tahl likes so much in her salads, a small batch of cooking herbs that tolerate the planet’s somewhat cool climate. 

Qui-Gon has gotten his piece of earth, and then some.

He works in this garden until the first sun sets, and then he trudges back from the field, his heavy work boots caked with mud and wet grass. He stops to take his boots off at the door, and then he must remember to stoop as he passes over the threshold. 

“There you are,” Tahl says when he walks in, his bare feet causing the old floorboards to creak with every step, and he bends over her head to kiss her cheek. 

He washes up in a basin, scrubbing the dirt from his hands and face before setting a packet of rice to cook over the heating coil.

In the evenings Tahl sets her commlink to record messages to Bant, to their other friends at the Temple. She speaks quietly into the recorder, telling her former padawan about the archives, of the journals she is translating from Chalactan into Basic. 

Qui-Gon listens to her voice as he cooks their evening meal and scours the pan with sand to clean it. Other nights, he has sat down with his commlink, intending to speak to Obi-Wan. To ask him about his training with Master Krell. To ask about his studies, the courses he is taking. He has wished to hear Obi-Wan’s voice speaking to him, bright with enthusiasm and rushing over his words in his eagerness to describe the details of what he is learning to Qui-Gon. To simply hear his voice, a comfort he has not had in months now. 

But he had hesitated. He had not known how to begin.

Tahl notices his distraction. She turns off her commlink and comes up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her forehead against his back.

“You are worried about Obi-Wan,” she notes. Qui-Gon does not deny it.

“I can’t imagine that Krell will be what he needs,” he admits. Perhaps he being stubborn, holding on to a responsibility that is no longer his to bear. But he has not forgotten the way Obi-Wan had looked at him when they had said goodbye. 

He shakes his head, to clear away the memories. He is almost grown, he reminds himself. He does not need me.

“He is seventeen, Qui-Gon. And you trained him well. He will manage.”

“You’re right,” he sighs. “I should let go.”

He wonders if Obi-Wan would welcome communication from him. Of course he would, Qui-Gon reminds himself, his former padawan has always had a generous heart. He has always welcomed Qui-Gon in his life, even when Qui-Gon could not do the same for him. 

He tries again, after they eat their meal. He takes the commlink in hand and programs in Obi-Wan’s channel. 

It should not be so difficult to find something to say to the boy he had raised for the past five years. 

Qui-Gon sits there for some time before he clicks the communicator off.

\---

The nesting pair have become accustomed to his presence over the course of many days. The birds no longer startle when he steps foot into their courtyard. But they remain protective of their nest and will not allow him near enough to look inside. 

“I thought you were supposed to be reclaiming the gardens,” Tahl had laughed at him, “not ceding them over to the local wildlife.” 

“The birds were here first, Tahl,” he had replied mildly, and she had shaken her head at him, still chuckling.

One morning when Qui-Gon steps into the courtyard, he hears the bright, eager voices of newly-hatched chicks. He listens to the noisy racket as he works to cut away the dried canes of lentas wood that have grown to block a fountain. The quiet spell of the Temple is broken somehow. But he does not mind. He rather likes the company.

He respects their space and confines himself to the walkways and stone benches. This courtyard is his favorite of all the ones he has discovered. There is a curtain of hanging diamanthion, small silver leaves that trail down out of the trees and brush against the ground. The dimanthion is blooming at this time of year, with rust-colored blossoms.

He tells Tahl about them while he helps her in the archives, shifting the tables and climbing up the shelves to access the oldest manuscripts. 

“Your treasury,” Tahl says suddenly. She is carefully cradling a glass holocron that glows with a faint green light. “You’ve collected treasures as long as I’ve known you, Qui-Gon. And now you have a treasury, a place for keeping them.”

He had not considered it like that before.

“I suppose I do,” he allows.

\---

Time passes quickly in the garden, and it is not so very long before the fledglings are beginning to venture away.  Qui-Gon finds one at the basin of the fountain. This fledgeling has left the nest too early; the fine down that covers its body does not contain the flight feathers it requires. 

He carefully crouches near and picks up the bird, as gently as he can with his rough hands, and places it back in the nest.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time he returned to Qui-Gon's quarters had been by accident, the result of habit and exhaustion that had brought him down that familiar route. He had stopped in front of the door, frustrated and ashamed of himself. He should have moved on by now. He should not hold on so tightly to the past, as Master Yoda said so often. 
> 
> And yet he keeps expecting to turn a corner and see his former master in one of his usual places, his head bent over a holocron in the archives or with rumpled tunics and a flashing lightsaber in the training rooms or stretched out in the soft grass of the meditation gardens, looking up to smile at Obi-Wan and say ruefully, I made a mistake, padawan. 
> 
> He can’t seem to get it in his head that Qui-Gon will not return, no matter how many times he reminds himself. 

His leg is aching again. 

Obi-Wan walks stiffly back to his quarters. He has begun to think that he had not quite healed all the way before, when his leg had been crushed by falling rock during their time on New Apsolon. After a grueling training session or a mission where he has been constantly on his feet, his knee will throb unrelentingly for the rest of the evening. His new master does not seem to notice. 

His new master is diligent in regards to his mission mandates, competent in his execution of duty. But there is no warmth between them. They work together as professionals. In a way, he supposes it is almost a compliment, that Master Krell should consider him capable of discharging his orders without supervision or comment. 

But he finds he misses most having someone to laugh with, to talk to during the routine work of missions. He and Qui-Gon had always made use of that time by reading together, or sparring. His new master is content to allow Obi-Wan to pass his free time in whatever manner suits him on their missions, and tacitly encourages him to seek out his own training when they are on Coruscant. 

He stretches his leg out on the sleep couch and gingerly peels back his pants. He carefully wraps a cold pack around his knee and waits for the swelling to ease.

Would Qui-Gon have noticed his leg was not quite healed? Perhaps. And maybe again, Obi-Wan reflects, maybe not. Qui-Gon had been badly distracted the last few weeks he had been a Jedi. 

Well, his injury is not so bad, and Obi-Wan has been trained in the care of field wounds. The swelling has gone down somewhat. He removes the cold pack and braces his leg with a bandage from his field kit.

His fingers brush against a smooth shape in his pack. He takes out the thratil egg and studies it again. The egg is the right size to fit in his palm, to curl his fingers around. He has taken to holding the egg while he meditates. He hopes, perhaps, for a flash of insight into Qui-Gon’s thoughts.

Does he ever think about me? Obi-Wan wonders. I think about him all the time.  He had looked up the planet where Qui-Gon was stationed, out of nothing but curiosity. The Temple of Ornayx, quite remote, almost on the edges of Wild Space.

He thinks it is probably the natural way of things. Qui-Gon has taken care of him for the past five years. He had arrived just when Obi-Wan had been about to give up hope of getting to be a padawan. Qui-Gon has been the most significant person in his life.  But Qui-Gon has lived longer, experienced more, known so many more beings. And Obi-Wan had only been in his life for such a short amount of time.

He gently traces the silvery cracks along the exterior of the shell, wondering again why Qui-Gon had seen fit to leave it with him. Qui-Gon always had a reason for the confounding things he did. This must be no different. 

What does it mean? Obi-Wan finds himself wondering again. P erhaps it is just a small token, insignificant. Like handing a child a pretty rock. He places the egg back in the pouch of his belt.

He has not heard from Qui-Gon since he went away. 

If Qui-Gon planned to contact him, he would have done so already. But a small part of his heart must not be ready to give up, because he still holds his breath whenever he receives a new message. 

His comm chirps. His new master requires his presence for a mission briefing in the Council chambers. 

His leg still aches when he stands up, but it bears his weight. 

\---

Obi-Wan is scheduled to depart the Temple the following morning, but before he leaves, Bant comes to him with her commlink blinking with a new private message from Tahl. 

She does not ask him about news from Qui-Gon, a bit of tact that Obi-Wan appreciates. Bant replays the message for him, and Tahl’s warm voice begins to tell her former padawan about the Temple, her restoration projects in the archives there.

“ _ Send my regards to Obi-Wan _ ,” Tahl’s voice says, and the message ends. Bant manages a smile. Her silver eyes are tentative. She had not meant to upset him. 

“Tell me about Master Fisto,” Obi-Wan asks instead, and Bant tells him about her master, his strange sense of humor that delights her even as it leaves her bemused, his mastery in Shii-Cho. 

“He is very kind,” Bant says softly. “How is Master Krell?”

He shrugs. “Fine,” he replies, not knowing what to say. His situation had not been like Bant’s. Master Fisto had sought her out to be his padawan. Bant, after all, was a brilliant student, considered on track to an early knighthood. 

No one had come forward for Obi-Wan, so he had pressed his case with the available masters at the Temple. Master Krell had accepted his request to continue his training, and for that, Obi-Wan feels as though his new master deserves his loyalty. His new master makes use of him, which Obi-Wan has appreciated. He is put to work on missions, sent to investigate potential leads and monitor uncertain situations. 

Anyway, he could never come close to Qui-Gon. 

Bant’s cool fingers find their way to his hand. “I miss Tahl,” Bant admits, ducking her head.

“I know,” Obi-Wan tells her, and lets her place her head on his shoulder. “It’ll get easier,” he soothes her, when the tears come. 

\---

Tahl sends him a recording. She is a thoughtful woman; she had never forgotten Obi-Wan once since Bant had asked her to include him in her scheduled updates to her Temple friends. He listens avidly, waiting patiently through her details of the Ornayx Temple gardens and tales of the villagers that have begun to inquire about the newly-reopened Temple for news of his former master. 

Tahl is teaching some of the local children how to read and write in various languages, she says. They are bright students. It is the rainy season there, and Qui-Gon comes home with mud so caked in his hair that Tahl must trim the ends. 

Qui-Gon was not pleased, she adds laughingly. Obi-Wan finds himself smiling, even as his heart twists with an odd sensation. 

His master is content, cared for, finding peace in his work and happiness in his life. 

Obi-Wan can ask for nothing more than that.

\---

He walks through the Temple corridors and finds himself at Qui-Gon’s old quarters. 

The first time he returned to Qui-Gon's quarters had been by accident, the result of habit and exhaustion that had brought him down that familiar route. He had stopped in front of the door, frustrated and ashamed of himself. He should have moved on by now. He should not hold on so tightly to the past, as Master Yoda said so often. 

And yet he keeps expecting to turn a corner and see his former master in one of his usual places, his head bent over a holocron in the archives or with rumpled tunics and a flashing lightsaber in the training rooms or stretched out in the soft grass of the meditation gardens, looking up to smile at Obi-Wan and say ruefully,  _ I made a mistake, padawan.  _

He can’t seem to get it in his head that Qui-Gon will not return, no matter how many times he reminds himself. 

Qui-Gon went away. He won’t be coming back.

But still he finds himself coming back to Qui-Gon’s quarters. He has tried so hard to be dutiful, to do what Qui-Gon wanted and to finish his training and become a knight. Surely he can allow himself this one comfort.  He will let himself forget about the present while he makes his pilgrimage to Qui-Gon’s empty rooms, he will let himself forget that Qui-Gon won’t be there, just for the amount of time it takes him to walk the path he had once traveled so often.

His leg is aching again, just from the brief walk. 

He leans against Qui-Gon’s door and slides to the floor, rubbing at his knee absently. 

\--- 

The next time Obi-Wan returns to the Temple, there is a note left by the Temple couriers in his rooms.

Nothing more than a note, a few words scrawled across the textured paper in an unfamiliar hand, made from artisan paper and carefully folded, with his name enscribed across the front. Obi-Wan takes a closer look. Then he sees the signature at the end of the note, a pair of initials, and recognition hits him. 

Obi-Wan had never had much occasion to see his master’s handwriting during the course of his apprenticeship. But the note has been written in Qui-Gon’s untidy script, old-fashioned in his use of flourishes and curlicues that had still been taught to initiates in his master’s time. 

_ Obi-Wan, I hope you are well. I saw a fledgling silver ibis learning to fly the other day and I had to laugh, for it reminded me so of you, when you were a little boy. I think of you often.  _

There are a few more lines, written in that oddly formal hand, notes on the weather, on Tahl’s work with her ceramics, how he and Tahl had stumbled across some Force-sensitive villagers and begun to lead meditations at their Temple each morning. How Qui-Gon wonders if he is still learning Ataru, or if he has switched to Master Krell’s prefered form.

He reads his master’s words, and once he has finished, he reads the note again, and then again after that.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tahl sits down next to him on their doorstep, and Qui-Gon tells her what he sees. He tells her of the sunrise, the gold and lavender light coming in over the hills in the valley below, the way the mist is clearing away from the hills to reveal their greenery. 
> 
> “Lovely,” he finishes softly. “All of it. I have never seen a world as lovely as this one.”
> 
> Tahl turns her face up towards the light and sniffs the fresh air. “I can tell,” she says.

Qui-Gon wakes up beside her, his arm draped heavily around her waist, his nose buried in her hair. 

He holds still, not wanting to wake her. She’ll be awake soon enough, and she will belong to herself, to her work in the archives, to the students that sit in her lap as she teaches them to hold a stylus and inscribe the Miralian alphabet on sheets of flimsi. But right now, she is with him. This hour exists only for them.

Tahl no longer opens her eyes as soon as she wakes up. He has noticed this, these past weeks of waking up together. But though she cannot see him, she can tell when he is looking at her. 

“Good morning,” she murmurs. “What are you thinking about, at this hour?”

“I had been wondering when you might want to marry me.”

Tahl slips out from under his arm, and moments later, Qui-Gon can hear the sound of water boiling in the kettle set over the heating coil. Then the scent of Noori blossoms and green tea drifts his way. 

He sighs, even while smiling. Tahl and her independant ways. He has asked her this question a dozen times since they arrived here, and he is no closer to getting a straight answer out of her. Sometimes she will laugh and make a joke, other times she will tease him until he throws up his hands and gives up. And other times, like now, she will slip quietly out of his arms.

When he rises, Tahl is standing barefoot on the front step of the cottage. She places a cup in his hand when he joins her on the step, an Aurean vessel glazed a vivid jade green and etched with silver where it has been repaired. 

Qui-Gon can feel the raised edges of the broken joints when he traces his fingers across the smooth porcelain. It frustrates Tahl to no end, that she has not been able to create a seamless repair for her broken ceramics. The Aurean potters can remake a vessel that is as smooth as the original, she has told him ruefully, setting aside her repair work.

The first sun is rising, the second sun is not far behind, a pink glow on the horizon. 

Tahl sits down next to him on their doorstep, and Qui-Gon tells her what he sees. He tells her of the sunrise, the gold and lavender light coming in over the hills in the valley below, the way the mist is clearing away from the hills to reveal their greenery. 

“Lovely,” he finishes softly. “All of it. I have never seen a world as lovely as this one.”

Tahl turns her face up towards the light and sniffs the fresh air. “I can tell,” she says. “I can feel it, in the air. And in your words. You bring it all to life, Qui-Gon.”

Her dark-honey hair is loose around her shoulders, still damp in the tendrils around her face from where she has been washing her face. Her hands are stained with the reddish potting clay she has been working with these past few weeks, her fingers curling around a blue cup with a spiderweb pattern of gold across its surface. 

He drinks in the sight, savors it. If this world is his treasury, then she is the treasure he is guarding so fiercely. 

She turns her head unerringly towards him. “Stop staring and get to work,” Tahl orders him. 

She is smiling.

\---

Qui-Gon has not brought much from his old life into his new one. 

There are the plant clippings he has transplanted into corners of the gardens at the Temple, and his lightsaber, no longer hanging at his belt but kept in a box in their cottage, nestled next to a similar box that contains Tahl’s. 

And there is the gift Obi-Wan had given him before he had left, the package still unwrapped, the string untied. He keeps it tucked away along with his lightsaber and a data crystal with his Temple records stored on it, a lifetime’s worth of history, reports written and filed in the archives, his official records, holos included in his official file, bioscans from every year of his life, stills captured by training droids in the salles and sent to his account. He has not looked at them since he arrived on Ornayx, but it is comforting to know that his past is still there. 

Qui-Gon finds himself thinking at times that if he did not still have those records, he might not have believed he had lived any life but this one. 

The cottage contained no furniture when they arrived. Since then, Qui-Gon has procured a low table, and some cushions. His role as Temple groundskeeper affords them a small salary, enough to keep them supplied with food and clothes, to purchase supplies to repair the cottage and to sponsor Tahl’s restoration of the Temple’s archives. 

And meanwhile, they have made do with the little they arrived on Ornayx with so far, along with the food stores and basic supplies Qui-Gon picks up regularly in the village. 

Tahl scours the cottage one day, beginning well before Qui-Gon had quite woken up and managed to rise from their nest of blankets and cloaks thrown over the mattress Tahl had made from sewn sheets and stuffed with dried grasses. 

He pads out of the small room where they sleep and into the main room of the cottage to find Tahl scrubbing down the floors with a bucket of water and sand. 

He steps carefully around the wet spots on the floorboards. “My dear,” Qui-Gon says cautiously, “may I ask what you are doing?”

Tahl pauses in her work to push back a strand of hair falling in her face. “Orbweavers,” she informs him. 

Qui-Gon glances at the ceiling. Yes, the cobwebs are still there, clinging to the corners of the room, just as they have been since they moved in. “And what of them?”

“One bold arachnid made the mistake of crawling across my cheek this morning,” Tahl replies darkly. “A mistake that it will not have occasion to repeat.”

“There is a place in the balance of the Force for all living things, Tahl.”

“Not for this one,” she huffs. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“How am I looking at you?” he protests. 

“Reproachfully,” Tahl says wryly. “Qui-Gon, I did  _ not  _ murder your ghastly housepet in cold blood. I merely removed him to a more hospitable location.”

“And where would that be, then?”

“Your side of the bed.”

He sputters, and Tahl laughs. 

She takes a broom to the webs in the ceiling and scours the floors with the sand, smoothing them until Qui-Gon could walk across the room in his bare feet without receiving a single splinter. 

She deserves so much more than this, Qui-Gon thinks with a pang. 

“Stop that thought right there,” Tahl says, guessing the trail of his thoughts. “I chose this life, Qui-Gon.”

At the very least, he thinks, she deserves a bed.

\---

  
  


Qui-Gon barters for the wood from the village. He has sprung up a friendship of sorts with some of the men who live in the farmlands outside the village, and they assist him in hauling the load of lumber back to his cottage. 

Tahl meets them at the door. “You’ve become quite the handyman,” Tahl teases him. 

“It’s important to cultivate new skill sets,” he insists. “And you’ll like this project, unless I am much mistaken.”

“What is it?” she asks, her curiosity piqued, and he deposits the load of lumber by the side of the cottage.

Qui-Gon straightens up, his hand braced against the cottage. “I’m building you a bed.”

\---

He works on the bed in the evenings, after he returns from tending to the crops in the nearby field. The wood he selected is lembra wood, ash-white with silver streaks through the wood grain. 

Qui-Gon cuts the wood into boards for the frame, sawing them to size and then sanding the wood until the silver grain can catch the light, and when he is finished, he assembles the bed frame in their small room off the living area. The four tall bedposts are spindled, along with the head and footboards.

She touches the wood where it curves in spindles across the headboard. “It’s beautiful,” she says softly.  “You don’t have to describe it for me, Qui-Gon." 

When she turns her face towards him, her eyes are wet. “I can tell.”

\---

That evening, Tahl sits on their bed and lets down her hair. 

She often wears it up, tied back in a high bun and kept out of her face, aside from a decorative braid here and there. It is only in the evenings when she takes out the pins that hold her hair up and shakes down her curls. 

Qui-Gon lies on his side of the bed, watching the way Tahl’s hands move gracefully as she unwinds her braids. “You have not answered my question,” he says. 

Tahl stills. Her braid continues to unravel without her assistance. “Which one?”

“When you might feel like marrying me.”

“Oh yes - of course.” She makes a wry face in his direction. “A Jedi craves not these material things.”

“I’m no longer a Jedi,” he points out. “And neither are you.”

Tahl sighs, long and poignant, and picks up her hairbrush, running it through her hair absently.

“Let me,” Qui-Gon says after several moments of watching her. Her face turns his way, surprised, and he takes the brush out of her unresisting hand. He touches the ends of her hair before he begins to smooth out the tangles. 

“Tell me what you see,” Tahl says suddenly. A rare thing, her asking for this, an acknowledgement of what she can no longer do. He has always offered her his sight, and she has listened to him describe all the things she can no longer see for herself. But she has never asked him to see for her until now.

“It is growing dark outside,” he says. “The second sun has set, and night is falling.” The windows of their cottage are almost black with dusk. He combs his fingers through her hair and tells her of the birdsong he hears just outside, of the purple twilight growing darker by the minute.

Her voice is quiet. “It is always dark, where I am.”

“Then let me in,” Qui-Gon says. “So that I may be there with you.”

“Why would you want that?”

“Because I love you, Tahl. Wherever you are headed, that is my path.”

He sets down the brush and stands up, pulling down the shade over the window so that their room is entirely in darkness. He reaches out for her presence in his mind, unhesitating into that white brilliance, and he can feel her reaching out for him as well. He cradles her against his chest.

They have never reached for each other this way, not in all the months they have lived here together.

“There you are,” he whispers. He kisses across her shoulders, and she lets out a quiet noise. “Here I am. We’ll face the dark together.”

“You find me,” Tahl whispers. She makes a sound that is both a laugh and a sob. “Even when I cannot find myself, you seek me out and guide me home.”

“I always will,” he promises her.

He kisses her neck, and then the hollow of her throat, and they are together in the dark, hands clasped and laughing.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve something to show you, Tahl,” Qui-Gon says when he comes round the archives.
> 
> He seems to make a new discovery every day. He comes to tell Tahl about what he has seen when he brings her an afternoon meal in the Temple, or in the evenings when he returns from the fields around the cottage with his tunics stiffened with sweat and his hair pulled fast into a knot on the nape of his neck.

“I’ve something to show you, Tahl,” Qui-Gon says when he comes round the archives.

He seems to make a new discovery every day. He comes to tell Tahl about what he has seen when he brings her an afternoon meal in the Temple, or in the evenings when he returns from the fields around the cottage with his tunics stiffened with sweat and his hair pulled fast into a knot on the nape of his neck.

He brings her items he has found, plants he has grown in his gardens or relics from the Temple grounds: Ancient lanterns with cracked glass he found half-buried in the gardens, broken vases and pottery in some of the rooms. Once he finds a small, plain box hidden in a storage room in the back of the Temple that is filled with raw kyber crystals. Tahl touches each one, feeling the Force catch and refract through the crystals, creating a cacophony of notes, and when the crystals settle back down, she places the box in a corner of the archives to keep her company in her work.

One afternoon Qui-Gon appears in the Temple carrying bread and cheese wrapped in a linen napkin, which he places at her elbow on the table where she is working. 

Tahl can sense his excitement, carefully tapered down under his calm exterior. She tries not to laugh. The great Master Jinn, she thinks fondly. He reminds her so much of a little boy at times, caught up in the thrill of discovery. 

Tahl raises her face towards him. “What have you found now, dear?” she asks patiently. 

“I think you’ll like it, Tahl.”

He has found a crate of preserved garments from the Jedi who had served this Temple. Qui-Gon brings the crate to her in the archives and they open it together.

Dust flies up in their faces when he pulls off the lid, and Tahl can hear Qui-Gon sneeze quietly. The sound makes her smile, for reasons she does not quite understand. 

“Carefully,” she reminds him, and they remove the items from the crate one by one. She unfolds tunics and sashes, her fingers feeling the moth-eaten holes in the garments, the raised borders of embroidery on the tabards. Her fingers can make out the shapes of stars, suns, patterns of diamonds and curlicues. Qui-Gon describes the clothes for her. Ochre-red with dark blue trim, a soft fawn brown with cream borders, a dark gold robe that falls down to her feet with blackwork patterns and lace on the collar. 

Beside her, Qui-Gon shakes out a heavy set of robes, stirring up the dust again. 

She raises her hand to swipe at the dust in her hair, but Qui-Gon catches her fingers. “I have a better idea,” he says. “I’ve found something else I think you’ll like.”

\---

Tahl follows him down a path in the wilderness that has grown up around the Temple. 

Qui-Gon has been exploring the ridges of the mountain where the Temple was built, and as they push through the underbrush he tells her some of what he sees. A thicket when a fauta mother and infant have nested down for the night. The way a danask tree is covered with pale pink fruit, almost ripe. The circle of standing rocks taller than Qui-Gon, a shrine even older than the Temple.

Then she hears the sound of water.

“It’s not quite the lake at the Temple,” Qui-Gon says. “But I found this place a few days ago, and I thought you might do with a bath.”

“It’s heavenly,” Tahl breathes, delighted. A wellspring that flows into a wide, shallow creek, Qui-Gon tells her, with shoals further down on the far side - the source of the rushing water she hears. He has been searching for the source of the water that runs through the aqueducts at the Temple, by walking alongside the stream and following it to the source.

He brings her to a place by the shoals wide enough for them to find a rock and climb out into the middle of the water. 

“Allow me,” Qui-Gon says gallantly. He takes her foot and begins to remove her dusty boots. 

“Ridiculous man,” Tahl says. She senses his smile when he strips off her sock and begins to dabble water on her foot. Onayx is a world with a cooler climate than she is used to; the water is quite cold. Still, the sun is warm on her face and shoulders. “I think you must have discovered everything there is to know about this place by now.”

“It is good to be aware of one’s surroundings,” Qui-Gon agrees. “Still. I feel certain that I have many discoveries ahead of me today.”

Tahl runs her hands down the front of his sweat-soaked tunic. “Oh, you feel certain, do you?” she teases him. 

“Oh yes.”

For a moment, his fingers run across the back of her neck, dipping briefly under the collar of her tunic, and Tahl cants her head to the side, enjoying the sensation of his touch.  Then she feels him pluck the long pin out of her bun, and she lets out a shout of surprise when her hair comes tumbling down. 

Tahl shoves him unceremoniously into the water.

She hears him slosh back onto the rock next to her, his tunics and hair streaming. “I suppose I deserved that,” he says ruefully.

“You certainly did.”

“The water is quite cold.”

“Yes, I’d noticed.”

He takes off his soaked tunics and pants and hangs them on a low-hanging branch to dry. Then he spends some time wading around the rocks while Tahl bathes briefly, then - shuddering from the cold water - drapes herself across a rock and soaks up the sun. 

She thinks briefly of the Room of a Thousand Fountains, feeling a sudden wave of homesickness. But the sun is real, here; she can feel it on her skin. The wind is just a shade too cold, causing her skin to prickle. The Temple’s climate had been perfectly comfortable; this place is not. Everything is a shade too difficult, too hard and too cold. But real. 

It’s real because it’s mine, Tahl thinks. The Temple never belonged to me, even though I belonged to it.

Then Qui-Gon splashes up to her rock with a handful of fruit he has picked from the danask trees that grow along the edge of the shoals, and telling her, “Let’s head back - there’s something I want to show you.”

\---

It is evening by the time they stumble back out of the wilderness, Tahl nursing cuts and scrapes from branches on her arms and shins. But Qui-Gon does not take them back to the cottage. Instead he brings her back to the Temple and leads her up a flight of stairs. 

She has never been to this part of the Temple before. The stairs here are broken and uneven, and she keeps losing her footing even when she leans on the Force to guide her. 

Tahl catches a fold of Qui-Gon’s tunic and lets him tow her after him. She does not always like to be led in such a fashion, but....well, all her usual objections feel pointless. She trusts Qui-Gon not to let her strumble. And there is no one to see her let down her defenses. They are alone here.

Qui-Gon helps her over a collapsed wall near the top of the stairs and steadies her as she steps into the small room. 

“An observatory,” Qui-Gon tells her. “The ones who lived here before charted the stars.”

“Yes,” Tahl breathes. “I’ve found the star charts among the manuscripts.”

They sit under the broken roof and Qui-Gon stargazes, telling her what he sees. The two moons are up, he says - one as white as milk, and the other as dark red as a jira berry, a trick of the atmosphere, he thinks.

He puts his head in her lap. Tahl runs her fingers through his hair, and catches on tangles. Qui-Gon winces. 

“Sorry, sorry,” she says. “I’ll try to be gentler.”

“My scalp and I would appreciate that,” he murmurs. She tries to smooth out the long strands, and he endures her attempts with the patience she has always loved about him. 

Finally she gives up. “How you ever managed to tame this mess and make yourself presentable is beyond me, Qui-Gon.”

“I was never presentable, Tahl - that was my secret.”

“I always thought you looked quite put together, when we were younger.”

“Did you, now.” She can't see his smirk, but she knows it's there. 

“I did.”  She hesitates, but carries on. “How do you look now?”

She hasn’t seen him in over eight years. It had been four years since she’d seen him, before she lost her vision to stray shrapnel during the Melida/Daan conflict. It hurts her still, to acknowledge what she has lost, what she cannot have. But she wants to know the answer. 

He catches her hand and it on his face. “Feel those lines?” he asks. He touches her fingertip to the crow’s feet around his eyes and then the lines on his brow. 

“You are responsible - and Obi-Wan, as well. My hair is much grayer than it used to be. I look like quite the wise elder now.”

“Hmm. I’m not sure I believe that,” she says wryly. “An elder perhaps - but any wisdom you possess you have borrowed from me.”

“How true,” he murmurs. “I am a wiser man for having known you.”

“What about me?” Tahl asks curiously. “How do I look now?”

“As lovely as ever,” Qui-Gon says immediately. “Your eyes are not as fierce so often - you are softer somehow. I don’t know how to describe it - but I like it. You laugh just as much as you always did, but the sound is different. You no longer open your eyes when you first wake up from sleep.”

He notices everything about her - he always has. She can still remember being young and looking up and finding his gaze locked on her face. 

Perhaps, she thinks guiltily, she has always loved him most for the way he loves her. 

“Your skin is still as smooth,” Qui-Gon says. “You have a silver hair here and there - you wear your years well. Stately, you know. You quite put me to shame, with all my lines and wrinkles. I’m afraid you are much too handsome to be paired with me.”

His voice is rather mournful. And to her own surprise, she wraps her arms around his neck and leans forward to bury her face against his chest. 

“I would not want you to look like anything other than yourself,” Tahl declares. She feels rather fierce about it, which startles her. “Don’t you dare regret those wrinkles. Those lines are how I know your face. How else will I recognize you, without them?” 

Tahl feels him smile into her hair. “Well. If you feel like that about it."

“Yes,” she says. “I do.”

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am thoroughly indulging in sentimental nonsense BECAUSE I CAN.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Letters from his former master do not come with any regularity. Sometimes Obi-Wan will receive only a single fold of paper for months; then he will find three or four messages arriving in the same week. It is very like his former master, he thinks wryly, to correspond in this way. Obi-Wan can’t afford the courier's fees to reply in the same manner, so instead he sends back messages over the net that Qui-Gon appears to receive. At least, he answers some of Obi-Wan’s questions outright, refers to others obliquely, and glosses over some subjects altogether, much in the same way he had always navigated their conversations before.

Letters from his former master do not come with any regularity. Sometimes Obi-Wan will receive only a single fold of paper for months; then he will find three or four messages arriving in the same week. It is very like his former master, he thinks wryly, to correspond in this way. Obi-Wan can’t afford the courier's fees to reply in the same manner, so instead he sends back messages over the net that Qui-Gon appears to receive. At least, he answers some of Obi-Wan’s questions outright, refers to others obliquely, and glosses over some subjects altogether, much in the same way he had always navigated their conversations before.

After that first letter, Obi-Wan had initially thrown himself fervently into writing a response, only to find himself pulling back once he began to type out a reply on his datapad. For the first time he had realized why it must have taken so long for Qui-Gon to write to _him_ \- he just can’t think of anything worth saying. 

You live with someone for five years, surely you must have something to talk to him about, Obi-Wan reasons. Philosophy, or politics, or even Temple gossip. Well, perhaps they don’t have anything in common after all. All Obi-Wan can think of to write about is himself, and Qui-Gon would hardly be interested in that.

Qui-Gon writes of his garden, the Temple, the local flora. Sometimes there will be a line or two that speaks of Tahl, in the same fond tone his master has always used to speak of her. He will sometimes ask about Obi-Wan. _What are you learning? What is Krell teaching you? What have your missions been like?_

Obi-Wan does not have the heart to tell him about his missions. His new master leaves him grappling for answers on his own. Before, when Obi-Wan had questions on a mission, he had not hesitated to approach Qui-Gon for answers, who had never minded when Obi-Wan did not know something. He begins to write, _I wish I could have performed better in this last assignment. I do not think Master Krell is pleased with me._

Then he stops, goes backs, and deletes the paragraph. Foolish. 

Instead he writes back brief accounts of his activities at the Temple and updates on his coursework - _Finished astrophysics courses through the seventh level, pilot’s license up for renewal._

He wants to write, _I hope you won’t forget about me_ \- but he does not. It would not be a Jedi thing to write. The sentiment only comes from that fearful place inside him, where the same feelings of _Not good enough, not enough_ originate from. 

If Qui-Gon’s letters should trickle to a stop and cease altogether, Obi-Wan reasons, he would have to keep on anyway. 

\---

The letters are a welcome distraction when they return to Coruscant after a mission. Obi-Wan has lately developed the habit of leaving some of Qui-Gon’s messages unread, to keep in his pocket through their next assignment, waiting for a moment when their mandates are concluded and all that remains is the long transport back to Coruscant, or when events have gone badly wrong and there is waiting to endure at a medcenter. 

Once Obi-Wan returns from a mission to find a scattering of notes left for him in his quarters. One is a lengthy account of the history of the Ornayx Jedi order, compiled by Tahl through texts and the villagers’ living memory from their grandparents’ days and narrated by Qui-Gon’s dry academic prose. There’s another short note with a rough sketch of an arachnid and bearing only the citation, _Orbweaver, actual size, found in my soup bowl this morning._ And Tahl has sent him a datastream of holos. 

Tahl’s message catches him by surprise when he checks his datapad: A dozen holo captures, taken by Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan sorts through the holos slowly, taking care to study each one.

One holo is of a small, rough building, where Tahl stands straight-backed and formal in front of the door. This must be where she and Qui-Gon live together. Obi-Wan has never known where they have been living, in all this time. There is another holo of the Temple at Ornayx, with its many-pillared great hall fallen into ruin, the architecture crumbling and vines spreading across the marbled floor. Another of an archive, with shelves of volumes glowing with faint golden light, and other shelves with ancient parchment scrolls and tablets. There’s another of Tahl, bent over one such scroll, her hands gloved and carefully holding her scanner, a serious look on her face. Strange to see her looking so studious. When Obi-Wan pictures her, it is always with her head tilted back to laugh. A holo of a table covered with newly-formed pottery set out to dry, and another focused on a pair of clay-stained hands - Tahl, again. There are written descriptions of each picture. 

And, surprisingly, there is a holo of Qui-Gon himself, arms folded and looking off into the distance, looking somehow just like himself even though he is wearing laboror’s clothes instead of Jedi tunics. _Taken by our neighbor to the south,_ the description says.

Obi-Wan studies this holo the longest. His former master is not smiling. But there is something about his eyes that suggests he is looking at something very dear to him.

He is not coming back.

It’s almost like hearing the news for the first time, having that revelation again. He had known that Qui-Gon was leaving, not on a mission or a sabbatical, but permanently. But it takes him by surprise once more. 

He closes the datastream. 

He does not reply to Qui-Gon’s latest message.

\---

Their mission to Thura goes badly from the start. Even his master, usually so stoic, had made note of their unusual circumstances. The royal family had not welcomed the Jedi. Their arrival was an unwanted intrusion into the politics of a world divided. The insurgents had attacked shortly after their arrival, cutting into the holy city and striking a blow on its civilians. 

And nothing they attempted seemed to work. There was little time to track down the insurgent cells; they were too busy defending the holy city and the pilgrims who would not take up arms to defend themselves. There was no time to act decisively; their actions were mere reactions. Qui-Gon would have realized and said so, and he would have found a way to anticipate the next strike, or to slice through the tangled knot of intrigue completely and come out ahead. 

Krell had been heavy-handed in dealing out justice. 

He had not captured the insurgent’s leader. Instead he had struck a killing blow, cutting the man’s head off. Obi-Wan had been sickened by the action. He had wanted to protest, but in the end, it had all worked out to Krell’s advantage. 

And yet, he thought, what could else have been done? He goes over their actions, again and again, and still he can’t figure out what had gone wrong, where they could have done something differently. 

He could not picture Qui-Gon performing such an action. 

Obi-Wan can’t help but feel guilty at this disloyal thought. Krell is a Jedi master, he reminds himself. _My_ master. He knows what he’s doing. 

All the long journey back, he cannot not stop thinking about it. He wishes he could talk to Qui-Gon about the mission, as they always had before, to give over what went wrong - what went right, if anything had - and what they could have done instead, and what was out of their control. In his head, he tries to explain to Qui-Gon that Krell’s plan to take on the insurgency leader had relied on using a caravan of unarmed pilgrims as a distraction. He tries to convince himself that this plan was no different from something Qui-Gon himself might have done. His former master had never shied away from taking certain risks. 

It’s no good. He can feel the wrongness of that thought.

Qui-Gon would not have risked the life of those people the way Krell had done, all for the same of manipulating the situation to his advantage. 

They are passing by Chandrila before he can accept the truth. It was wrong, he admits finally, there is simply no other word for it. His former master would think so, and even if Qui-Gon didn’t, _Obi-Wan_ thinks so. 

His work is all he has left - and if he can not do good work, meaningful work, then he does not have anything left in the Order worth staying for.

Coruscant is visible in the viewport, shining even from the distance in subspace.

There is no place for me here, Obi-Wan realizes. And if he cannot work with his current master, there will be no place for him in the Order. There will be no other masters, no other chances. Anyway, the Temple hasn’t been home for almost a year now. There’s nothing worth staying for, without Qui-Gon.

\---

Thura had been violent. Obi-Wan had fallen badly in the final action against the insurgents, and his weak knee had taken the brunt of the impact. When he had regained his footing, pain had shot down his leg. He had quelled it in the moment with a liberal application of the Force, but now the pain has come back in its entirety. When they arrive at the Temple, he does not ask for Krell’s permission. He leaves for the halls of healing by himself.

The healer tells him that the ligaments in his knee were badly damaged, that surgery might be necessary eventually, that therapy could be required and healing would be slow. He does not elect to stay for the surgery. There will be time for that in the Agri-Corps. Now that he has made his decision, he only wants to leave as soon as possible. 

Instead he asks for and receives basic medical care. Then he asks for Master Windu, and formally requests his reassignment to the Corps from within the halls of healing.

Master Windu only says, with one eyebrow lifted, “You’re certain of your decision this time.”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan agrees dully. I’m sorry, Qui-Gon, he thinks, I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t be what you wanted me to be. Probably he couldn’t have been what Qui-Gon had hoped for him even if he hadn’t left; Obi-Wan has been struggling against his fate since Bandomeer.

  
  


\---

There’s a note waiting in his quarters when he goes to collect his personal belongings. 

He leaves it on his bed, unread.

  
  



	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Master Windu is coming,” she says slowly. 
> 
> Qui-Gon’s mind goes blank. “Here?” he asks, to make sure.
> 
> “I believe we are being checked up on, Qui-Gon,” Tahl says teasingly. “I hope he does not plan to audit the account books. Because we haven’t been keeping any.” 
> 
> She says it lightly enough. But he cannot escape a certain sense of foreboding.

Qui-Gon has planted many things in the fields around the cottage. He is cultivating food out of necessity. But he is also cultivating beauty.

Of all the possessions he had brought with him from Coruscant, his plants were the most precious to him. The houseplants he had cultivated in his quarters, some for many years. Felucian ferns, hanging vines, succulents; not all of them able to withstand Ornayx’s cool climate. He has repotted many of them and scattered them around the windows and the bare floors of their cottage. 

He calls the groundskeeper at the Temple and asks questions, and Master Pertha sends him small shipments of carefully-packaged vials containing rare plants from the Temple’s collection, all the flowers Qui-Gon remembers from the Room of a Thousand Fountains, all the flowers he remembers from his childhood. He had loved them before he had known their names. He tends to them in their growing tubes, checking their water levels and temperature carefully until the seedlings have grown enough to tolerate transplanting. 

Qui-Gon cannot seem to stop collecting plants. He talks to the villagers on his journeys down the valley for supplies, and comes trudging back with napkins containing seeds from his neighbor’s gardens, cuttings and bulbs from the old grandmothers' yard. 

“This one reminds me of you,” he tells Tahl. He describes for her an Ornayx native wildflower, the glida lily, with its pale golden leaves and dark heart-shaped face in the center. Qui-Gon is telling her about the glida lily’s preferred woodland habitat when Tahl begins to chuckle. 

Qui-Gon breaks off abruptly. “What’s so funny?” he asks, bemused.

“You are still a teacher at heart,” Tahl laughs. 

“Not anymore,” Qui-Gon replies gruffly. “I’m a gardener now.”

“The two are not so different,” she says. “You plant your seeds, and nurture them, and watch them grow. You cannot help being a teacher, Qui-Gon - it’s part of who you are. Look at you, trying to teach me about horticulture. I am afraid, however, that I am not your most attentive student at the moment.”

“Hmm,” he says, and tucks a glida lily behind her ear.

\---

They are sorting through their correspondence at the table over a pot of tea. The table is quite new. He has only recently finished it, the wood having been a gift from their neighbor after Qui-Gon had assisted in cutting down an overgrown field of saplings and bush. He had polished the wood for the table top until it was smooth to the touch. 

“No splinters here,” he had assured Tahl.

“Ah,” she had replied. “That’s one surface down, and the rest of the house to go.”

Tahl is skimming through her messages on her datapad. Qui-Gon is reading a note from Obi-Wan on his, frowning as he reads. 

“What does he say?” Tahl asks.

He sighs. “Not much. I worry he is unhappy.” He scrubs his face with his hand. “I suppose it is no longer my duty to worry so much.”

“As I told you before - you are a teacher at heart,” she says gently. “You always have been, even when you could not bear the thought of taking another student. I am not surprised that you still worry about Obi-Wan. I think perhaps you always will.”

She is right. Qui-Gon tests the thought and finds it to hold true. He cannot imagine himself ever waking up to a day when he no longer worried about his former padawan.

Across the table, he senses Tahl’s sudden preoccupation, and he feels himself shift into alertness. An old habit, hard to get rid of, even though the closest they have come to a crisis so far had been the night Qui-Gon had come home from the fields with his clothes already half-off, shaking fire-point nettlegrass out of his tunics. “What is it?”

Her fingers are skimming over her datapad. “Master Windu is coming,” she says slowly. 

Qui-Gon’s mind goes blank. “Here?” he asks, to make sure.

“I believe we are being checked up on, Qui-Gon,” Tahl says teasingly. “I hope he does not plan to audit the account books. Because we haven’t been keeping any.” 

She says it lightly enough. But he cannot escape a certain sense of foreboding.

\---

Qui-Gon spends the next few days keeping himself busy with the gardens, so that when night falls he is too exhausted to do anything more than fall straight asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow. He feels both a sudden relief and a sharp spike of anxiety flare through him when Mace’s transport touches down in the field behind their cottage, startling their neighbor’s herd of atapu calves and sending them running to the far corner of their pasture. 

Tahl comes to stand beside him, her arm brushing against his sleeve. Qui-Gon is grateful for her presence. He knows without being told that he is the reason that Mace is here.

Mace steps off the transport, his robes billowing around him. “Qui-Gon, I thought you should hear this directly from me."

Qui-Gon tenses up at these words. There can never be anything good to come after a beginning like that. Mace takes out a length of cloth out of the parcel and hands it to him.

Qui-Gon takes the parcel, unwinding it slowly to reveal a braid of reddish-brown hair. He feels himself go pale. “What’s the meaning of this?” he asks hoarsely. “Is he-” He cannot even finish the thought. He had always thought he would know if something were to happen to Obi-Wan, even though they had grown apart. 

But Mace is already holding up his hand to forestall him. “He is alive,” he says. “Obi-Wan has resigned from the Order.”

Qui-Gonwraps his fingers tightly around the braid. “What happened?” he demands. “Why did this happen, what reason did he give you for this decision?”

“He gave no reason,” Mace tells him. “He simply said he felt that this was the right path for him.”

He finds himself shaking his head stubbornly. “That can’t be true,” Qui-Gon argues. “There must have been a reason, Mace! Didn’t he say anything to you?”

“He said nothing, other than that he wished to leave immediately for the AgriCorps.”

“And you let him?” Qui-Gon snaps, incredulous. “You asked no questions?”

Mace is giving him a poignant look. “Did I ask for an explanation from you?” 

\---

Tahl takes command of the situation, taking Mace to visit the Temple and leaving him blessedly alone to compose himself. Qui-Gon is grateful in a distant sort of way. He had thought he was prepared for any news that Mace might have brought with him. He was wrong. 

What was the boy thinking? Qui-Gon wonders, anguished. What could have brought him to this?

He watches Tahl and Mace disappear down the path towards the Temple and realizes belatedly that he is still clutching Obi-Wan’s braid in his hand. He ought to follow Tahl and Mace and discuss whatever other business Mace has brought with him. But all he can think about is how he needs to be close to his former padawan somehow. To try to understand what has gone so very wrong. 

The gift, he remembers suddenly, and with that thought in his mind, his feet take him to the cottage.

Obi-Wan’s gift has been tucked away by the box where he has kept his lightsaber. Qui-Gon sits down on the bed, and takes the small parcel in his hand. It weighs almost nothing. He tugs apart the knots in the twine and unfolds the brown paper packet, and a small clear vial falls into his palm. The vial bears a label, written out in a familiar, sturdy hand: _Iverness starflower_. Inside the vial are dozens of small black seeds. 

He has a sudden clear memory of taking Obi-Wan down the lakeside path at the Temple to show him the blooming flowers that drift around the rocks at the base of the cliff, the ones he had always had a wordless love for. The flowers had been one of the few memories he still had of his homeworld. 

“They bloom only a short time,” he had told his padawan, “but the scent of them takes me home.”

He had not been able to form the right words to explain why these flowers were so important. How his mother had planted them outside the windows of their home, and how at night he had smelled them as he fell asleep. But his padawan had knelt beside him and touched the petals gently. 

Qui-Gon had not supposed that Obi-Wan would consider that to be anything other than an insignificant moment. But Obi-Wan, perhaps understanding what they meant to him, had remembered. 

He sits there, holding the container of seeds in one hand and with Obi-Wan’s braid coiled up in the other. 

\---

It is late in the afternoon when he hears footsteps at the door. Tahl has returned to the cottage alone. 

She finds him still sitting on their bed. He hears her breathe out, a long, quiet sigh. Then Tahl sinks down on the bed beside him. She says nothing. It is Qui-Gon who finally breaks the silence between them. “He left because of me,” Qui-Gon says abruptly. 

Her voice is measured. “You don’t know that is true.”

“I do know that. He was unhappy - he tried to tell me with his silence, and I refused to notice. I know him better than that. I should have paid better attention. But I did not want to see it. I have failed him in so many ways, and yet I have managed to find another way to hurt him.”

“You do not have all the facts,” Tahl reminds him gently. “Even Mace does not have all the facts. You cannot know why Obi-Wan chose to leave the Order. He has made the same decision before.”

“That was my fault as well.”

“Qui-Gon.”

“How could I let this happen?”

Tahl takes his hand into her lap. He does not deserve it at all, but she begins to stroke her fingers across his palm. “Self-recrimination is not the way to help him, Qui-Gon.” 

He very nearly groans. “Then what should I do?” 

“Pack what you need. Mace is leaving soon.”

He glances at her, uncomprehending. She looks serious. “Tahl -”

She drops his hand and taps his forehead. “Why do you think Mace came here? Think, Qui-Gon. He did not come all the way out here to check up on my progress with the Rumalidon texts. He came here for your help.”

He cannot help but snort his disbelief. “Mace said that?”

“No. You know what he’s like.” 

Qui-Gon does know. The Jedi way is noninterference. And yet this is something that he cannot allow to stand. Mace’s hands are tied until Obi-Wan goes to confide in him. And Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon is sure, will never do that. “Then how do you know?”

“Mace is asking with his presence.”

Qui-Gon drops his head against the backs of his hands. “ _Tahl._ ”

“You cannot turn away from this. I know you, Qui-Gon. You would not be able to live with yourself if you did not do everything you could to help. You are still his teacher. And he needs you now.”

Tahl rests her hand on his shoulder. “So we’ll go find him.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Qui-Gon absently polishes the surface of his hilt and finds himself remembering how he had found Obi-Wan in the sickbay of the Monument. How even though he had still been unconscious, Obi-Wan’s mind had reached out and touched him, a flower turning instinctively towards the sun. The boy had woken up and asked, Are you here to take me home?
> 
> He checks his crystal in its setting and finds that it sits slightly ajar. He adjusts the angle with the delicate tool he always keeps in his belt pouch. 
> 
> How different things might have been, Qui-Gon thinks with a pang, if he had only answered differently. If only he had said, Yes. That is why I am here. 

Time passes slowly in hyperspace. 

Qui-Gon finds himself alone in the cabin, while Tahl and Mace speak together in the ship’s cockpit. 

He is unsettled, and unsure of what to do about it. He is both anxious to get to Obi-Wan and dreading what he will encounter. He wonders what he will do if it becomes apparent that Obi-Wan should not wish to see him again. 

_Focus on the moment._ His own voice, echoing in his head. Good advice, even if it comes from himself.

He opens his pack and takes out his lightsaber. He had hesitated, back at the cottage, about whether or not to bring it with him. He has not felt right about wearing it on his belt since arriving on Ornayx. Qui-Gon tries to contemplate how it might feel to wear his saber again at the Temple on Coruscant. 

No flashes of insight come to him. Qui-Gon shakes his head and begins to methodically take apart his lightsaber, wiping down each component and carefully excavating specks of dust and dirt from the grooves in the hilt.

He listens idly to the talk that drifts from the cockpit. It becomes apparent that he and Tahl do have accounts, which have been exquisitely kept. Tahl and Mace discuss the contents of Tahl’s ledgers for much of the journey back to Coruscant.

He is glad enough to have their attention carefully drawn away from him. He cannot bring himself to focus on their talk of finances and the cost of repairs. He is thinking of other transports, other ships. That last trip from New Apsolon, which had been the beginning of a change that had encompassed his entire life. That first transport to Bandomeer, the beginning of another great change. 

Qui-Gon absently polishes the surface of his hilt and finds himself remembering how he had found Obi-Wan in the sickbay of the _Monument_ . How even though he had still been unconscious, Obi-Wan’s mind had reached out and touched him, a flower turning instinctively towards the sun. The boy had woken up and asked, _Are you here to take me home?_

He checks his crystal in its setting and finds that it sits slightly ajar. He adjusts the angle with the delicate tool he always keeps in his belt pouch. 

How different things might have been, Qui-Gon thinks with a pang, if he had only answered differently. If only he had said, _Yes. That is why I am here._

\---

Their shuttle docks at the landing bay close to the towers, no doubt, Qui-Gon reflects, due to Mace’s presence on board. He has a demanding schedule - and Qui-Gon wonders again at how he had found the time to travel to a remote planet skirting the edge of Wild Space. 

But when he mentions it to his old friend and sparring partner, Mace only replies, “The Force ensures that there will be time enough for all we deem important.”

Qui-Gon had assumed that he would be allowed to go to Obi-Wan as soon as they reached the Temple. But instead, Mace leads them to a tower spire. 

Then there is more waiting to endure. Qui-Gon stands with Tahl in the antechamber while Mace confers with the masters on the Reconciliation Council. He is finding it difficult to hold himself still. He would like to be well on his way. He can feel his former padawan’s braid in the pocket of his tunic, reminding him of his purpose here. He reaches out with the Force, but he cannot find Obi-Wan. 

Mace is frowning when he steps out of the chambers. “I had anticipated that Padawan Kenobi would remain in the Temple until I returned. But he has accepted a position in the AgriCorps and made his departure.”

Qui-Gon finds himself struggling to remain calm. He feels Tahl’s warning hand on his arm. He closes his eyes and manages to release his feelings back to the Force. 

_Less than a year out of the Order, and I have forgotten everything I once knew._

“Then we should be on our way,” he says with all the composure he can muster. 

But Mace holds up a hand to forestall him. “I would ask you to remain here for a few days.”

Qui-Gon slides his hands inside his sleeves, a habit he had almost discarded. Now the gesture affords him the calm he cannot seem to find on his own. “For what reason?” 

“You have other matters to attend. The Council of Reassignment will meet tomorrow to hear your report on your activities at the Ornayx temple.” 

“And what shall I do until then, Mace?” he demands with exasperation.

Mace almost smiles. “You shall be our guests.”

\---

“Where shall we go?” Tahl asks. 

“I had thought you might wish to visit Bant.”

She sighs. “Bant is offworld. With her new master.”

There are friends here, people to visit. But he cannot bring himself to want to see anyone.

“I feel the same,” Tahl murmurs. “The lake, Qui-Gon.”

The Temple feels differently to him. He had anticipated a feeling of strangeness in his return. He has felt it before, when long missions had kept him from Coruscant. The sense of a place changes like currents in a river. What feels comfortable and familiar can change with a simple alteration. He knows this - but he is shocked somehow, all the same. 

He keeps looking around him, at the columns and wall hangings, the pattern of the marble on the floor. All familiar. But no longer a part of his daily life. 

His feet automatically take him down the same familiar path in the Room of a Thousand Fountains that he had always walked with Obi-Wan. When something had come up that Qui-Gon needed to address. When he could sense that there was some preoccupation on his padawan’s mind. He had steered them on this particular trail, as it wound through the room’s open spaces, past the fountains and cascades, into a quieter section of the gardens, culminating in a glade by the foot of the cliffs, with a boulder and several small fountains trickling in pools around it. 

The starflowers that can be counted on to grow here are not in bloom. His heart sinks. He had hoped...well, never mind. 

“I can hear you stomping all over the grass,” Tahl calls out. “What are you looking for?”

“I had just thought the starflowers might be blooming,” Qui-Gon says distractedly. “It is about the right time.”

He goes back to where Tahl is sitting and settles beside her.

“This isn’t at all what I thought it would feel like,” she says. “Coming back.”

“What did you imagine?”

“I thought I would come here, and find that I would regret having left,” Tahl muses. “I thought I would. I was afraid to come back. Thinking that I would find that I had missed my home so badly that I would not want to leave again. I suppose I thought I could return some day, as long as we did not marry. That my home would be waiting for me if I changed my mind and decided we had made a mistake.”

His throat closes up. He has been so afraid - almost the only thing he has left to fear, now - that he would hear her say these words. 

The Force holds its breath in the space between them.

“And what have you found?” he asks, when he can speak again.

Tahl presses her lips to the side of his facem her breath warm against his cheek. “I am a slow learner, Qui-Gon,” she breathes into his ear. “I’ve only now discovered that my home is with you. Wherever you are. Wherever you wish to go.”

Qui-Gon has no words. He presses his face into the curve of her neck. 

Later that night, she whispers these words, so quietly that perhaps he only hears the words through the Force.

_I’m ready to marry you now._

\---

The Temple is quiet. Qui-Gon cannot rest in the guest quarters they have been given for the night. 

He leaves Tahl sleeping on her side, her dark hair spread across her pillow and her hand tucked under her cheek.

\---

His own quarters and Tahl’s had already been reassigned to newly knighted Jedi. But Obi-Wan has not been gone for long. Surely -

He waves his hand in front of the sensor pad, and the door slides open. 

Obi-Wan’s room is clean. Not the perpetual tidiness of the boy who always made sure to make up his sleep couch and stack his datapads neatly. It is empty in the way that a room becomes when no one is planning to return. 

There is something on the neatly-made sleep couch. Qui-Gon steps inside to take a closer look, and then with a flash of recognition, he sees what it is. A note he had sent to Obi-Wan some time ago. Had his former padawan been given the note at all? 

Or perhaps, he thinks heavily, Obi-Wan had received it, and simply hadn’t wanted to hear from Qui-Gon at all.

He picks up the note and smoothes it out a little, flattening the creases lines in the paper. The letter is unopened. He unfolds the note, and his own handwriting leaps out at him. 

How little he had found to say to his former padawan. How little he had been able to convey in these notes. 

_I should have been writing an apology all this time. I should have told him that I missed him every day. That I never wanted to leave him out of this new part of my life._

“What happened, Obi-Wan?” he says out loud, to the emptiness in the room. The Force feels poised on the edge of something, a sharp anticipation like the feel of ground glass crunching underfoot. He does not understand why the Force feels coiled up, ready to unravel at the slightest pull. 

A vergence here, he thinks, a decision made, with consequences still waiting to unfold. Mace might have identified this coiled-up, broken-glass feeling as a shatterpoint. 

Qui-Gon slips the note inside his tunic. 

He does not leave right away. Instead he pushes up against the vergence, trying to understand. But Force does not offer answers.

\---

The Council of Reassignment meets in the tower spire the following morning. Qui-Gon delivers a brief report to the Council of their activities at the Temple on Ornayx, detailing the condition of the Temple, the state of its contents and the surrounding grounds. When he is finished, Tahl offers her remarks on the archives and their contents. She speaks longer than he had, her warm voice detailing her records and accounts.

“Much you have accomplished in a short time, Master Jinn,” says Master Yaddle. She blinks up at him slowly. 

He can feel his own crooked smile. “These are only some small things, master. My work now is of little consequence.” 

“Hmmph,” grunts Yoda in his seat across the room. He has been listening to their report with a sharp look in his eye. And as the councilors rise to leave the chamber, Master Yoda hobbles towards Qui-Gon, gesturing with his stick. 

“Meditate with me, you must,” Yoda says. “Come with me, you will.”

He glances across the room beseechingly, but Tahl is talking to another master. He holds back a sigh. 

“Of course, Master,” Qui-Gon says obediently, and trails after the master to his quarters in a secluded area of the Temple. Once he has settled on a cushion around the low table, Yoda begins to busy himself with heating the kettle and steeping their tea. 

“Carry your lightsaber again, you do,” Yoda notices with seeming pleasure. “Good that is. One of us you still are. Remember that, you should.”

On instinct, his hand goes to the hilt of his saber. He had assumed he would not wear it to the Council. But Tahl had clipped her own lightsaber back on her belt, and he had reconsidered. 

“I am no longer a member of the Order,” he replies evenly. 

Yoda looks at him keenly as he stirs the tea leaves in the pot, then covers it with the lid. “But still a Jedi you are. Valued, the Jedi of the service corps are. Just as valued as the knights and masters of the Order,” he says mildly. 

“I know that, Master,” Qui-Gon replies, exasperated. 

“Say you know this, you do. But believe it, you still do not.”

“Perhaps that is true,” he says, slightly too sharply. Perhaps a shade irritated at Master Yoda. Perhaps more irritated at his own blindness. He ought to have seen this fault in himself. Ideally before Master Yoda would have occasion to point it out to him.

Yoda opens the lid of the pot and breathes deeply. “Changes you have made. Rearranged, your priorities are now. Guilt you feel because of this, hmm?”

He bows his head uncomfortably at the master’s words. “Yes,” he admits. It is true. His guilt at leaving the Order who has always had need of his service, guilt at leaving Obi-Wan’s training unfinished. Leaving behind his friend, his family at the Temple. 

“Received what you wanted at the expense of the Order, you believe, do you?”

He falters against Yoda’s steady look. “Yes,” he repeats reluctantly.

“Know this, you should. Your life this is. Your choices you have made. Seasons change. Priorities shift. Served the Order well, you have for many years. Serve the Order now, you still do, in a different way. Not a lesser way. No shame there is in that. This place your home still is, Qui-Gon. A Jedi you remain.” 

A shadow he had not even been entirely aware of seems to lift from his heart.

“Thank you, Master Yoda,” he murmurs.

“A slow learner you have always been, Qui-Gon,” Yoda grumbles. “Now. Pour our tea, you shall.”

\---

Mace sees them off. 

Before Qui-Gon steps onboard their borrowed ship, Mace hands him a datapad. “I would ask you to deliver these documents personally,” Mace says. The stern lines on his face do not waver, but Qui-Gon feels a faint ripple of amusement course through the Force. 

“And what do these documents say?”

“That Obi-Wan has been reassigned,” Mace says. “To the AgriCorps station at Ornayx.”

“But Ornayx doesn't have such a thing,” Qui-Gon says blankly. 

“You do now,” Mace replies. “You’ve been promoted to a Master of the Corps. Congratulations, Qui-Gon.”

“Mace, you can’t do this to me,” he protests. “I have quite enough to handle already - did you see where we live?” 

“Such a promotion comes with additional funds to be spent at your discretion,” Mace continues. “For your own projects, as well for the salaries of any AgriCorps workers you might employ.”

Qui-Gon shakes his head in disbelief. He cannot wrap his head around this. Another gift. And from Mace, who has never quite approved of his methods. He does not feel as though he deserves it. 

“I assume you have the space for another member of the service corps at your Temple, Qui-Gon.”

“Yes,” Qui-Gon replies. “Yes, we’ll make room.”

“See that you do.” 

He feels a surge of overwhelming gratitude. “Thank you, Mace.”

“Qui-Gon, when you get there -” Mace almost hesitates. “See if you can get him to open up about what happened. Hear what he has to say about his most recent master.”

Qui-Gon looks at him sharply. “This is about Krell,” he says, realization dawning on him. “You harbor suspicions about him.”

Mace lets his arms hang at his sides. His face is bleak. 

“If you had seen all that I have seen,” he says in a careful voice. Like the blunt edge of a knife. There is sharpness on the other side. “You would agree that changes must be made. That the Order’s fate hinges upon these changes. I will let the Force be my guide in these matters.”

“Obi-Wan,” he says slowly. “You are speaking of Obi-Wan. What have you seen for him?”

Mace is looking at him with deep sorrow etched across his face. His robes are caught in the wind that always blows between the buildings this high up on the surface of the city. 

“If I can change the future in some small way, if I can ensure a kinder fate. For all of you. Then it will be worth it.” 

  
  
  



	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He might have chosen another branch of the Corps to join after abandoning his apprenticeship, the EduCorps or ExplorCorps. He might have been happier somewhere else. Obi-Wan could not have said exactly why he felt such a need to return to Bandomeer, to the work he had started so many years before. Perhaps it was merely his own streak of perfectionism, how he hated to leave work unfinished. Perhaps Bandomeer felt familiar, an old friend waiting for him, not a disquieting unknown. 
> 
> Or perhaps, he admits, sweat running down his face and stinging his eyes, this was simply a way to feel close to Qui-Gon. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The most lovely and talented Wrennette has painted a gorgeous watercolor of Tahl studying starmaps at the Temple! You can view it [here](https://wrennette.tumblr.com/post/618201145775620096/the-archivist-of-ornayx-i-couldnt-stop-thinking).

Obi-Wan wears the soft gloves he was provided with while planting small potted seedlings into rows in the greenhouses. When Bandomeer’s sun reaches the middle of the sky, he pauses in his work to drink his canteen of water, pouring the rest of the water over his face. 

Obi-Wan starts another row of seedlings and wonders if Qui-Gon is doing the same kind of work, wherever he is. If he, too, is digging up weeds and turning over soil. 

The thought steadies him. An anchor. He could get lost among all this greenness. He had not been so sensitive to the living Force his first time on Bandomeer. Now, there is a riot of  _ roots - clinging - light - climbing _ life clamoring at the edge of his senses constantly. It must have been studying under Qui-Gon that has made him so sensitive.

He might have chosen another branch of the Corps to join after abandoning his apprenticeship, the EduCorps or ExplorCorps. He might have been happier somewhere else. Obi-Wan could not have said exactly why he felt such a need to return to Bandomeer, to the work he had started so many years before. 

Perhaps it was merely his own streak of perfectionism, how he hated to leave work unfinished. Perhaps Bandomeer felt familiar, an old friend waiting for him, not a disquieting unknown. 

Or perhaps, he admits, sweat running down his face and stinging his eyes, this was simply a way to feel close to Qui-Gon. They had spent time on Bandomeer together. Qui-Gon had taken him back to the AgriCorps station after the Home Planet Mine bomb was defused, before they had left the planet for their next mission. Qui-Gon had allowed Obi-Wan to walk him up and down the greenhouse rows and to peek into the supply closets, showing his new master where he had worked and slept and ate for those few nights he had lived there. 

Bandomeer was one of the few places left that reminded him of his master, and therefore it is the closest thing to a home he had left.

\---

He has been keeping away from the other AgriCorps workers, preferring silence during both his shifts and his spare time. Obi-Wan knows that he ought to be joining in conversations at night in the dormitories, making a place for himself here at the station. But he finds it difficult to begin, for one, and because he feels like a thin shadow of a person. As though he is only half here. 

_ Then where is the rest of me? _ Obi-Wan wonders. Not back at the Temple. His thoughts rarely drift back there. Sometimes they drift forward, though seasons changing and years passing, watching himself growing older from a distance. Sometimes his thoughts drift backward, to missions he had gone on with Qui-Gon. 

His master is not here on Bandomeer, but he may as well be. Obi-Wan finds himself speaking to him every moment. 

Obi-Wan crouches among the rows of fragrant oisfa root and thins out the seedlings, and while he works, he is telling Qui-Gon about being held in a cell on Phindar, waiting for his memory to be erased. 

_ I wished you would come, _ he admits. Dirt gets under his nails, gets baked into his skin.  _ More than I’ve ever wished for anything. But you didn’t. And it hurt, though I could never tell you so. Perhaps you guessed.  _

He is tilling a new planting spot, an expansion of the field on the southern B-dome, creating deep furrows in the native soil that will be later amended with compost and minerals for future crops, and while he handles the cultivator, he is talking Qui-Gon through all the years of his apprenticeship.

_ I wanted to stay by your side on Gala, when you went to the country to seek the rebels. I was afraid to be left alone - that was because of what happened on Phindar.  _

And Qui-Gon, true to his former master, seems to listen patiently, occasionally nodding at something Obi-Wan confesses, sometimes seeming to chuckle briefly. Other times lowering his chin to his chest in that silent way Obi-Wan has learned to recognize means heartache. 

_ I only ever wanted to be with you,  _ Obi-Wan explains to him as he picks deshni fruits in the orchards. The berries grow so close to the branches he must stand on a platform to reach them. The fruit is tender and delicate, he must work without gloves, and at times his fingers will get caught on the thorns.  _ I wanted you to look at me like I was someone important. Don’t know why.  _

So many things have happened since he left Bandomeer five years ago. He can’t quite make sense of any of it except by trying to explain what happened to Qui-Gon. 

He talks to Qui-Gon through his shifts. The steady, repetitive work is a kind of meditation. His thoughts slow down until there is only the sun and the soil and Qui-Gon, always present, in his distant sort of way. 

At the close of each day, Obi-Wan hauls his exhausted body back to the dormitories for a shower, and wraps his knee in an ice pack. There hasn’t been a day on Bandomeer since he arrived that he hasn’t needed to wrap his leg. It aches throughout his shifts, and at night his knee is so swollen he must peel the leg of his jumpsuit off gingerly. 

Obi-Wan will not visit the common room with his roommates later. He will lie on his bunk, his leg elevated to take the pressure off, and he will still be explaining things to Qui-Gon long after the lights go out and the room settles into silence around him.

\---

He does not eat his meals with the others. He takes his food from the refectory and finds a quiet place to rest. There are the agricultural domes with orchards and the greenhouses with the young seedlings under grow lights, pleasant places but often busy with workers, he has found. Today Obi-Wan leaves the station.

There is not much outside of the station but empty expanses of barren land. Beyond the walls, there is the great gray sea and the rock-strewn shoreline. Obi-Wan picks out a trail through the rocks and starts up towards a cliff. His knee protests at the climb. He grits his teeth and pushes through. 

There is no shade at the peak of the cliff, only gnarled roots of a tree that had fallen years ago. The sun beats down on his head as he stands, causing him to squint at the water. Obi-Wan has crossed that sea twice before. Once with Qui-Gon. That is a memory he treasures, for all the pain he had endured before its arrival. It had been the first time that Qui-Gon had offered him a glimpse of his own inner life. 

He sits down in the sand and pebbles and draws his arms around his knees. And he argues with Qui-Gon. 

_ About Krell, _ he begins. He is prepared to lay out his case. He has gone over it enough times before, he could tell the details of Thura in his sleep. 

Then he drops his chin on his chest. He still does not know how to explain Krell to Qui-Gon. 

His master would have waited until he was ready to speak. His master would have laid an arm around his shoulders, or nudged him in the ribs if Qui-Gon was in a teasing mood. If he was here with Obi-Wan right now...

Obi-Wan blinks into the glare of the sun, reflected off the gray water, making everything too bright, too harsh. 

“You’re not here,” he says aloud. “Why would you be? I’m not the one you wanted.”

He stays on the cliff until dark clouds blow rapidly over the sea and a scattering of raindrops on his arms and the back of his neck causes him to shiver. Then he pushes himself back to his feet, wincing at his weight shifting over his left knee, and begins the climb back down to the station.

\---

When he returns, he checks on his own workstations, ensuring that his rows of seedlings have been watered and his tools cleaned and set away for the night, then he makes his way to the dormitory. 

Obi-Wan hangs up his coveralls and settles into his bunk, picking absently at the new blisters that keep breaking up through the skin on his hands. He is used to training with weapons, he is used to the way that repeated work roughens the skin. But not like this. He will develop new blisters before his work is half through for the day, and spend the rest of his shift wincing at the way the new raw spots keep pressing against his tools. 

One of the Arconian stationmasters enters the dorm, calling out his name. Obi-Wan feels a flutter of surprise and alarm. He has not done anything to draw notice to himself, he hopes. He does not want to be anyone noticeable, for a change.

“New orders,” the stationmaster informs him, passing him a battered datapad. 

“What’s this?” he asks, dumbfounded.

“Your transfer papers,” says the stationmaster. Her golden-orange eyes blink slowly in the dim light. “An AgriCorps service ship will be here to collect you tomorrow.”

_ It figures, _ he thinks bitterly.  _ I’ve managed to make a mess of this again. At least this time it took longer than twenty-four hours.  _

\----

The next morning Obi-Wan rises and dons his jumpsuit and laces his work boots. While the others are heading towards the domes, he packs the few items he brought with him. He had not taken much with him from Coruscant. He regrets his lightsaber most of all he had left back at the Temple, how the crystals inside the hilt had been a familiar song that hummed underneath everything. 

He turns the sheets neatly over the foot of his bunk, ready for the next occupant. Then he heads out. 

\---

His orders had not specified when his transport would be arriving. Obi-Wan waits through the morning and well into the afternoon, sitting stiff-backed on the bench at the landing platform under the watchful eye of the transport technician. But by the time that evening has fallen, he is leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. 

He keeps his eyes closed against the bright lights of the landing platform, even as he hears the unmistakable sound of a ship touching down and engines shutting off one by one, then hydraulic ramps unfurling and footfalls on the duracrete floor. Then the transport technician’s voice, coming from a distance, and then another voice, speaking briefly, words obscured by the cooling engine thrusters. 

“I am here for the boy,” says a voice, very near.

Obi-Wan cannot believe his own senses. He had not supposed, even in his wildest imaginings, that Qui-Gon might come after him. But when he finally looks up, there is a familiar figure bending over him. Qui-Gon, really and truly, wearing the dark green uniform of the AgriCorps. 

Since Obi-Wan returned to Bandomeer, he has thought of little besides his former master. Now, by some mystery of the Force, Qui-Gon is here, and Obi-Wan cannot bear to look at him. He stares down at his own hands instead, clasped in his lap. He concentrates on the blisters that have formed on his palm, counting them carefully to center himself. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks when he feels steady enough. His voice sounds stiff to his own ears. 

“I came to bring you back with me.”

“I do not wish to return to Coruscant.” It is the only response Obi-Wan feels capable of giving. He can feel his own turmoil rolling through him. It is all he can do to wrestle those emotions down and keep them from showing on his face. Qui-Gon had been the one to teach him how to compose his features, long ago.

“Not to Coruscant.” Qui-Gon’s voice is measured. “To the Temple where I work. There is an AgriCorps station there.”

“You want me at your Temple?”  He risks a brief glance upward. The expression on Qui-Gon’s face might give him a sense of how to feel about all this. Perhaps Qui-Gon had requested his transfer.

Qui-Gon is bending over him, his face solemn and concerned. There is a deep line in his brow. Obi-Wan feels his stomach drop. He quickly looks back down at his hands again.

“The Council of Reassignment scheduled your transfer to my station,” Qui-Gon explains in his quiet manner. So taking him in hadn’t been Qui-Gon’s idea. 

“You need somewhere to go. I thought you might like to come with us.”

“Us?” Obi-Wan repeats foolishly.

“Tahl is waiting in the ship. She came with me, to retrieve you. You don’t wish to see her?”

Obi-Wan shrugs. He feels Qui-Gon’s quiet sigh pass by the side of his face. He goes on staring downwards. He contemplates Qui-Gon’s boots. The work boots of a farmer, rather than the field boots of a knight. How strange they look on his master. He wonders, absurdly, if he looks just as strange to Qui-Gon in his own dirt-stained jumpsuit. 

He can feel Qui-Gon’s quizzical look. “Obi-Wan, why won’t you look at me?”

Obi-Wan swallows. “I hate for you to see me like this.”

“Like what?”

“A failure.”

The boots shuffle briefly, then move out of sight. He resists the urge to look up, to see where Qui-Gon has gone. Then he feels a weight settle next to him on the bench. 

“Will you talk to me, Obi-Wan?”

“I’m sorry.” He bites back the word  _ Master  _ before it slips out of his mouth.  _ He is not that to me, anymore. _

Qui-Gon, calm and listening. So much like all the times Obi-Wan has pictured him since arriving on Bandomeer “What do you have to be sorry for?”

“I couldn’t achieve what you wanted for me. I couldn’t make it as a padawan without you.”

“Obi-Wan, I only wanted you to find success and fulfillment. To be satisfied in your life.” There is distress in Qui-Gon's voice, and Obi-Wan flinches away. “I assumed that completing your training to knighthood would offer you those things.”

Obi-Wan shakes his head stubbornly. “I told you I didn’t want it anymore.”

Qui-Gon does not say anything for a while. They sit together in silence. Obi-Wan can sense that Qui-Gon is contemplating his next words carefully. 

After some time, Qui-Gon starts to speak. 

“You used to bring me flowers, when you were a little boy. Starflowers bloom for such a short time. I told you that, when I first brought you to see the gardens. Every year afterward, you would pick the first flowers to blossom and bring them to me. I thought you might grow older and forget, but you never did.”

His voice is rough. “I had not told you what that meant to me.”

Obi-Wan goes on listening, despite himself. Qui-Gon’s voice continues, “You have always exceeded my expectations. I have known you to always follow the light. I cannot believe anything about you but that.”

Silence again. Then Qui-Gon asks heavily, “Do you accept the transfer?” 

Obi-Wan shakes his head, fighting against the tightness in his chest, not knowing how to answer.

“You wish to stay here, then.”

“ _ No. _ ”

Qui-Gon seems to consider this for a moment. Obi-Wan is quite certain that they are at an impasse. He wonders dully what Qui-Gon will do next. He is almost certain that Qui-Gon will simply stand up and walk away. Disappear back into his ship and blast off away from this world, leaving him behind again. 

But Qui-Gon remains with him. 

“Then - would you come with me?” Qui-Gon asks slowly. “Not as a AgriCorps worker. But simply as my friend.”

Obi-Wan finally looks at him. There is a look of deep unhappiness on Qui-Gon's face. “Is that why you’re here? To be my friend?”

“Yes,” says Qui-Gon. “I’m here to take you home.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obi-Wan is subdued for much of their return to Ornayx. He keeps to himself during the seventy-two hour journey through hyperspace. Qui-Gon can feel the way Obi-Wan folds the Force into himself, as if hiding in the folds of a cloak. 
> 
> Qui-Gon will let him be for now. He has never had much success pressing the boy when he becomes quiet like this. Better to allow him his space for a while. 

Obi-Wan is subdued for much of their return to Ornayx. He keeps to himself during the seventy-two hour journey through hyperspace. Qui-Gon can feel the way Obi-Wan folds the Force into himself, as if hiding in the folds of a cloak. 

Qui-Gon will let him be for now. He has never had much success pressing the boy when he becomes quiet like this. Better to allow him his space for a while. 

All the same, he does not want Obi-Wan to feel looked over. Qui-Gon reads the contents of his packets from the Council of Reassignment out loud, making comments here and there. He is finding, with some dismay, about his new responsibilities and expectations that come with his new role. Qui-Gon goes over his datapads of finance spreadsheets and AgriCorps regulations until his head aches. 

He sets down the datapad and scrubs his hand over his aching eyes. “I’m not sure I can handle this,” he confesses to Obi-Wan ruefully. The boy finally looks up at him with a startled look on his face. 

“You don’t think so?” he asks slowly.

“I’m not terribly good at adjustments. Perhaps I am too old for this.”

Tahl makes a scathing noise from where she is adjusting the climate regulators in the cockpit. “You keep trying to use your age against yourself, Qui-Gon,” she says wryly. “You had better find another excuse, or you might find that this one comes true.” 

“It’s not an excuse,” Qui-Gon protests mildly. “It’s this financial data, Tahl. I cannot figure out how these spreadsheets work.”

“You’ve never been able to work a spreadsheet. I don’t think we can blame your most recent difficulties on your advanced years.”

Obi-Wan smiles a bit at that. He is rubbing at his leg again. Qui-Gon has noticed that Obi-Wan often stops to adjust a brace and bandage on his left knee. When he had asked about it, Obi-Wan had not had much to say. An injury from a mission, not yet healed. Qui-Gon doesn’t push him for answers. 

Every time Qui-Gon looks over at the boy who used to be his apprentice, he notices something else new and different about him. How his face is thinner. His broken nails. His hair, starting to grow out of his padawan cut and falling in his eyes. The braid, no longer hanging over his shoulder. His AgriCorps jumpsuit, neatly tucked inside his boots. 

He is changed from how Qui-Gon has been remembering him. In his mind, Qui-Gon has kept on picturing the young boy Obi-Wan had been in their first uncertain year together, who had to run to keep up with his master’s long strides. Now when Obi-Wan stands up, Qui-Gon is surprised to discover that his former apprentice has grown taller.

_A year is a long time for a boy,_ he thinks. _It did not feel like such a long time, for me. But I’ve been gone for so long, for him. I have missed so many moments in his life that I cannot get back._

All boys grow up. So why then, he wonders, does it hurt to witness?

\---

Tahl lands their ship in the empty pasture near their cottage. A loan, Mace had stressed when he had assigned them the ship. Still, it settles Qui-Gon’s mind to have a ready transport close at hand. Some instincts cannot be buried entirely. 

Where will we keep it, though? he wonders distractedly. Their neighbor will be wanting to use that field eventually. 

Obi-Wan disembarks the ship and stands blinking at the Temple off in the distance, half-hidden in the fog winding across the mountain, at the hills dipping low into the valleys, at the small cottage and freshly-plowed fields surrounding it. Qui-Gon had left his fields right at the beginning of the planting season to go to Coruscant. Time lost here means hard work and hurrying to get seeds in the ground. But he watches Obi-Wan’s face as the sun shines down on him, and finds he cannot regret a lost harvest. 

“Is this where you live?” Obi-Wan asks when he sees the cottage. Qui-Gon can’t help himself from glancing over at Tahl and feeling her wry, almost-shrug pass through the Force to him. 

“Unfortunately,” Tahl remarks. “You should have seen it as it was when we first arrived, Obi-Wan. You’d have been even more alarmed.”

Obi-Wan smiles uncertainly. He and Tahl had been good friends once, Qui-Gon remembers. But Obi-Wan had not found much to say to her since he boarded the ship back on Bandomeer. 

Qui-Gon feels a growing sense of dismay and is startled to realize that it is his own. _I didn’t expect it to be easy,_ he chides himself. He shakes his head and worries instead over where to put Obi-Wan in their cottage. 

Really there is no place for him except the main room. He helps Obi-Wan set up his bedroll in a corner and fetches a box from his workshop for Obi-Wan to store his things. 

“This house is rough,” he explains to Obi-Wan. “We have not spent much time on it, I’m afraid. We have mostly been working on the Temple - I would like to make it inhabitable again, in the future.”

Obi-Wan just nods at his words. He sits on his bedroll while Qui-Gon goes to the small corner of the room where they prepare food. He turns on the heating coil and brings out the last of their supply of rice and begins to prepare a meal. 

He notes the supplies they have left. Mace had promised that he would have the Council of Reassignment prepare a supply drop for the newest AgriCorps station. Qui-Gon hopes they’ll get around to it in the near future. So early in the growing season, all he has to supplement their meal with is a few root vegetables from last year’s harvest, and same of the spicy early greens that Tahl likes mixed in with her rice. 

“May I help?” asks Obi-Wan from his corner. His first words since entering the cottage.

“Yes, thank you.” Qui-Gon passes him the knife and some of the root vegetables. Obi-Wan stares at it for a moment, then begins to slice up the root vegetables. 

“I planted oisfa root at the station on Bandomeer,” Obi-Wan says suddenly. Qui-Gon looks at him out of the corner of his eye. Obi-Wan has not volunteered any information about his time on Bandomeer until now.

“I’ll be planting oisfa root here in the coming weeks,” Qui-Gon responds. “Perhaps you could help me.”

Obi-Wan presses his mouth in a thin line and goes silent. 

They eat together around the low table. Tahl does most of the talking. She tells Obi-Wan about the young girls from the village who she has been teaching to read and write Mirialian the past year, and afterwards, she collects their bowls and utensils and sends Qui-Gon out to walk the fields and check on the property. 

He hovers by the door. “I can always go out in the morning.”

Tahl pushes him out the door. “We’ll be all right. We’ll do the washing up.”

“Obi-Wan-”

“He’ll still be here, when you return. Go. No brooding, Qui-Gon,” she calls after him as he disappears into the last remnants of daylight.

\---

It is his and Tahl’s habit to mediate together in the evenings. Obi-Wan settles down on his bedroll and closes his eyes. Qui-Gon falls into a light trance, tracing with light fingers over the familiar sense of his home, the growing things inside their cottage, the unique peaks and valleys of the landforms of the world. Then he dips briefly into the white-hot connection in the Force where Tahl waits for him, feels her answering smile of affection. 

But though he tries, Obi-Wan remains opaque to him. Qui-Gon tries to send a whisper of Force across the room to him, a light brush where their connection used to be like a quick touch on the shoulder. But he meets only emptiness.

Tahl rises from the floor and walks to their room. The floorboards creak under her feet. 

Before he follows her, Qui-Gon pauses. “Do you need anything?”

“No,” Obi-Wan responds. He is already lying down, curled on his side under the extra blanket Tahl had found for him. His head is sinking down towards his chest. “I’ll be all right.”

Qui-Gon waits, but no other answer is forthcoming. 

\---

Tahl places her hands on his shoulders when he comes to their room and sits down heavily on their bed. 

“He’ll come around,” Tahl promises, her voice soft and fond. “He is resilient, Qui-Gon. You both are.”

He gropes around for one of her hands and squeezes it tightly. 

  
  



	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obi-Wan puts himself to work with dogged persistence. Over the next few days, he works in the fields with Qui-Gon sowing seeds, he carries Tahl’s newly-fired pots from the kiln to her worktable, he digs weeds from the perimeter of their cottage and sweeps the moss off the front stairs.
> 
> Inside the cottage, Obi-Wan wipes the dust off the shelves with great care and washes all their dishes and performs all the tasks that they have been meaning to get around to accomplishing but have never found the time for. 
> 
> “He is industrious,” Tahl notes. “Indeed, he is so busy that I scarcely notice his presence." 

Outside, the world is waking up. Tahl has missed these sounds, while she was away. She always knows as soon as the first sun begins to rise, because the aspin birds that burrow into the wood of the fence posts near their cottage will begin to call to each other. Then the second sun will rise only a half hour later, and the day will begin.

The time between the first sunrise and the second has become their time. The bed shifts as Qui-Gon turns over to face her, his arm draped across her side. His fingers stroke up and down her side gently, dipping down the curve of her hip, then back up. Tahl makes an appreciative noise.

“I missed our home,” she murmurs. “I missed this bed.”

“I feel the same. It’s good to be back.” His fingers continue traveling, lightly brushing down her neck, then against the bare skin of her arm. Then the warmth of his hand disappears.

“Are you getting up?” she asks drowsily.

“Yes,” Qui-Gon answers. But he does not move. Instead he winds her hair around his finger absently. “Your hair’s grown longer.”

“So has yours,” she returns. She finds the ends of his hair, spread out against the sheets, and tugs gently before reaching for his face. His bearded cheek scratches against her palm. He turns his face into her hand and kisses her fingers. 

Qui-Gon shifts closer, and the bed frame creaks loudly. He goes still. 

“The walls have ears,” Tahl says under her breath. It is difficult not to be conscious of every noise, in such a small house. 

“I don’t know what to do with him,” Qui-Gon confesses. “This place was fine, when it was only you and me. But he can’t go on sleeping on the floor out there.”

“We managed for quite a while, as I recall.”

“He didn’t ask to be here. He deserves better than this,” Qui-Gon sighs. Tahl takes advantage of the moment to press her lips between his eyes. There is a deep crease of worry there. She tries her best to smooth it away with a kiss. 

“We’ll find a solution. Perhaps there’s one right under our noses.”

“You might be right. I ought to check.” He kisses down the line of her nose. “Hmm, no solutions here.”  Then his moustache is tickling the side of her mouth. “You were right,” he rumbles. “A solution has presented itself.” His hand slides into her hair while Qui-Gon kisses her. 

Subdued noises are beginning to emerge from the other room. Quiet sounds of dishes clattering and tea being poured. 

Tahl breaks off the kiss and rolls on her back. “He’s an early riser,” she observes. 

Qui-Gon exhales regretfully. “He always has been.” 

Then there is an indistinguishable noise, perhaps a startled intake of breath, coming from the other room, followed by the ominous rattling of a dish _. _

“Go help your fledgling with the morning meal,” Tahl says, and pushes him out of bed.

  
  


\---

Obi-Wan has made tea, and breakfast. Tahl can hear him carefully setting plates and cups at the table. 

She sits down. Qui-Gon’s voice carries from across the room. “I did tell you that was the actual size,” Qui-Gon is saying. “Orbweavers can grow quite large here.”

“I thought that might have been a joke,” Obi-Wan says with great caution. The teapot is set down at Tahl’s elbow, the cracked lid clinking in its familiar way. “You make those sometime.”

“I never jest about wildlife,” Qui-Gon replies. “Ask Tahl.” 

“I take it that you have met our housepet,” she quips. “We never can tell where he’ll turn up next. We’ve gotten quite fond of him. Qui-Gon refuses to have him relocated.”

A muttered fragment of a sentence that sounds remarkably like  _ He would _ .

\---

There is so much Qui-Gon wants to show him. As eager as if he were a boy himself, Tahl thinks, and hides her smile behind her hand. He takes Obi-Wan around to investigate the fields surrounding the cottage. Tahl can hear his voice carrying through the open windows that morning. 

And then, with Tahl following closely on his heels, he takes Obi-Wan to the Temple.

Obi-Wan is silent as he steps across the perimeter. Tahl can hear the sound of his footsteps, lighter and quicker than Qui-Gon’s rangy stride, as he walks tentatively down the great hall. Qui-Gon has worked to clear a path across the broken marble floor; Tahl knows the way by heart, where to step over a pothole or where the floor dips irregularly. 

“There are more rooms, spiraling out from here,” Qui-Gon announces, ahead of them both. “The archives, there, and the workrooms and kitchen that way. Here are rooms where the previous Jedi once lived. Those rooms I would like to make habitable again, someday.”

“That’s quite a task,” Obi-Wan says. He doesn’t say much else. Tahl suddenly realizes what Qui-Gon had meant before, when he talked about Obi-Wan’s silences. There is so much the boy does not say. It is difficult to tell what he thinks about anything Qui-Gon has shown him. 

He is so polite, he has forgotten how to tell the truth, Tahl thinks. Or perhaps he does not even know how he truly feels about anything.

She listens as their footsteps move on further down the great hall, Qui-Gon’s strides moving ahead with great assurance and Obi-Wan’s uneven, cautious steps. 

\----

Obi-Wan puts himself to work with dogged persistence. Over the next few days, he works in the fields with Qui-Gon sowing seeds, he carries Tahl’s newly-fired pots from the kiln to her worktable, he digs weeds from the perimeter of their cottage and sweeps the moss off the front stairs.

Inside the cottage, Obi-Wan wipes the dust off the shelves with great care and washes all their dishes and performs all the tasks that they have been meaning to get around to accomplishing but have never found the time for. 

“He is industrious,” Tahl notes. “Indeed, he is so busy that I scarcely notice his presence. Are you sure he is not avoiding me?"

"I shouldn't think so," Qui-Gon answers with caution. "He's always liked you."

Obi-Wan finds many ways to keep out of the way. He is always busy, always moving, always anticipating their needs. He fetches water from the cistern in the mornings just after the first sunrise, and is boiling tea for their morning meal by the second. 

"Are all young men of this age so unobtrusive, or is Obi-Wan unique in this respect?” Tahl asks, curious.

Qui-Gon snorts fondly. “He has cultivated avoidance into a high art form.”

“And what were you planning to do about it?”

“He’ll wear himself down one way or another, I’m sure.” But Qui-Gon’s voice does not sound certain.

All his labor is beginning to take its toll. Qui-Gon is the first to notice how he limps back to the cottage in the evening. He tells Tahl about it in a low voice that night after they have gone to bed.

“It concerns me greatly,” Qui-Gon says. He is sitting up in bed, and Tahl lowers herself down beside him. “That leg should have healed by now, if it was only a minor strain.”

“Has he told you how the injury happened?” 

“He won’t talk to me, Tahl.” 

His voice is brusque. She nestles into his arms, and Qui-Gon rests his chin on her head. 

“He needs more time. Be patient with him.”

“How can I help him if I cannot get him to speak to me?” His voice is obscured by her hair, but Tahl can feel how it resonates through his broad chest. 

“Just be here. When he does decide he’s ready, you’ll have to be here, ready to hear him.”

“You are very wise.”

“I do have that reputation.”

Qui-Gon laughs out loud at that, and she feels as though she has accomplished a minor victory.  All the same, Tahl thinks as he settles into a heavy sleep at her side, the boy will need more help than they have given him so far. 

\---

This morning, Tahl rises first.

She slips quietly from the room, leaving Qui-Gon snoring lightly in bed. In the main room, she hears Obi-Wan startle awake as she closes the door behind her.  “It’s only me,” Tahl reassures him. She can feel his wary gaze on her as she steps over to the corner where they keep their stores of food and feels around carefully on the shelf. 

“Where has the tea gone?” she wonders aloud. She is always careful to leave items in the same spot so she can find them again, and Qui-Gon knows not to disturb her careful system. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, I must have moved it, I wasn’t thinking-” Obi-Wan’s voice is repentant. Tahl can hear him scrambling to his feet. “I’ll put it back.”

“It’s all right. I’ve found it.” She locates the canister and twists off the lid, counting spoonfuls of sapir leaves into the teapot. For a while there are no sounds but the spoon clicking inside the pot. 

Obi-Wan breaks the silence. “I’m intruding. On you and Qui-Gon. I shouldn’t be here.”

Oh dear. Tahl sets down the canister of tea, wondering how to proceed. For a few minutes she simply sets the water to boil and steeps the tea. Then she carries the cups to the table and sits down.

“Come sit with me,” she invites.

A sense of indecisiveness comes from the corner. “You'll need more water. I ought to-”

“You don’t need to do anything right now. I’d like your company.”

“Oh.” The sound of blankets being pushed aside, and bare feet on the floor, then Obi-Wan sits down across from her. 

“This is strange,” Tahl comments. She can hear his huff of laughter, clearly surprised by his own involuntary amusement as much as he is surprised by her admission. She smiles. “We were friends once, Obi-Wan. I hope we can be friends again.”

“Of course,” he says instantly. “I’d like that. It’s just-”

“Strange.”

“Yes.” The sound of a teacup being lifted, but he doesn’t drink. There comes the sound of a finger running lightly along the rim of the cup. 

“I wish I could do more to help you,” Obi-Wan says wistfully. “You were kind, to let me come to stay with you. I wish I could do more, while I’m here.”

Tahl wraps her hands around the warmth of her teacup. Mornings are cold here, even in late spring. “Are you planning to leave us?”

He evades her question. “I’m supposed to work. I was brought here to work. I ought to do my share.”

“But you can’t,” Tahl says softly. “You’re hurt.”

She can tell how he stiffens up, even across the table. “It’s all right. I can manage.”

“When were you injured?”

He hesitates, clearly reluctant to say. 

“Obi-Wan, I’d like to know.”

Perhaps her forthrightness works where Qui-Gon’s acceptance does not. She hears his voice catch in his throat before he speaks. “New Apsolon.”

Tahl takes in his information, a sinking sensation in her belly. New Apsolon had taken so much from her, it had become her own personal trial to overcome, just as much a trial as losing her sight on Melida/Daan had been. 

She has been thinking all this time of New Apsolon as  _ hers.  _ Her anger at the betrayal of former friends to overcome, her fear for her own life to work through, her choices to make, her path to bend once again. And she had forgotten, or perhaps just never realized, how deeply that experience had affected others. 

_ None of us left New Apsolon unscathed _ , she thinks to herself. Her struggles, Qui-Gon quietly torn apart by his own choices, Bant’s despair. It stands to reason that Obi-Wan, too, has been marked as well. 

Tahl presses her cup against her cheek, thinking. “It’s been a year. Why haven’t you recovered?”

The fabric of Obi-Wan’s tunic rustles as he shrugs. “It’s gotten worse since then.”

“You didn’t tell Qui-Gon.”

Sleeves drag along the table as Obi-Wan puts his head down on his arms. “I didn’t want to say.” His voice is muffled. “You won’t keep me, if I can’t work.” 

“That’s not why you’re here,” she offers, as gently as she can. “You’re here because we wanted you with us. Qui-Gon and I both.”

Silence. Tahl lets him recover his dignity for a moment before speaking again. She can tell that he is perilously close to tears.

“Obi-Wan,” she says kindly, once his breathing grows steadier. “Drink your tea.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Qui-Gon can feel the living Force here in these fields as he never has before, even on planets with vast forests and jungles teeming with life. Perhaps it is because he has become so entrenched in this one place, since he has come to know this land so intimately. The trees that spread their lace-patterned branches on the edges of the fields, the flickering lights in the Force that belong to the sprouting seeds of his crops. Qui-Gon takes joy in the way the Force surrounds him here, and he is surprised to notice that Obi-Wan seems to feel it too.

It is the planting season. The fields have survived Qui-Gon’s sudden absence. He has done the difficult work of cultivating the ground, and now his task is to propagate seeds and to wait for results. Qui-Gon begins his work at second sunrise and carries on through until late in the evening. 

He does not have much time to devote to the Temple’s restoration. The Temple will have to wait, he counsels himself. There are other tasks, more urgent, that require his attention right now. And there is Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan assists him in the fields. He has learned much of the nature of their work from his time on Bandomeer; he can accomplish most tasks without the need for direction from Qui-Gon. So they trudge from furrow to furrow in silence, tucking seeds into mounds of soil. 

It is companionable, having someone to work with, even though Obi-Wan never says much. His presence adds a spark of liveliness to the greenery surrounding them, with his focused attentiveness that he brings to bear on the work. 

Qui-Gon can feel the living Force here in these fields as he never has before, even on planets with vast forests and jungles teeming with life. Perhaps it is because he has become so entrenched in this one place, since he has come to know this land so intimately. The trees that spread their lace-patterned branches on the edges of the fields, the flickering lights in the Force that belong to the sprouting seeds of his crops. Qui-Gon takes joy in the way the Force surrounds him here, and he is surprised to notice that Obi-Wan seems to feel it too.

He watches as Obi-Wan coaxes a half-wilted aroca sapling back to health, nourishing the plant by drawing from the living Force and sending it back to the sapling. The aroca sapling is rejuvenated by the time Obi-Wan takes his hand away. 

“You’ve grown more sensitive to the living Force,” Qui-Gon notes.

“Your doing, master,” Obi-Wan replies. His voice is matter-of-fact. “You taught me that trick, once. I haven’t forgotten.” He bends back over the sapling to stake it up on its supportive trellis, but Qui-Gon can see the pleased look on the boy’s face. 

It makes for easier work, with two. Together they plant tubers in the southern field, and early greens in the field to the east of the cottage. 

Qui-Gon keeps the packet of starflower seeds in his pocket. He is not sure why he is hesitant to sow them. Perhaps it is merely that he cannot find a place where they might be successful. He thinks back to his earliest memories, his mother’s hair falling over her shoulder as she worked in her garden. Starflowers are quite delicate, he remembers. The seeds will need a sheltered place to grow if they are to thrive. 

Still, there are other seeds to keep him busy: rutlish root, viene beans, juma saplings in the orchard. 

“We’ll finish these last few rows today, and tomorrow we can begin on the northern field,” Qui-Gon tells Obi-Wan after that day’s work. “I believe the danthe cuttings will do best there- but it is only a guess. We’ll see, I suppose, when it comes time to harvest their fruits.”

Obi-Wan nods his agreement. He never remarks on Qui-Gon’s plans for the future, not for the fields or for the Temple. It worries Qui-Gon to no end. 

Does he plan to leave? Qui-Gon wonders, not for the first time. The thought makes him recoil with badly-concealed hurt. We’ve barely even begun, he thinks. There’s so much still to do.

Obi-Wan is watching him wearily. This work is hard on him, Qui-Gon thinks, and makes a decision in that instant. “Come to think of it, I think we’ve done enough for today. You go on and head back, I’ll finish up here.”

Obi-Wan disappears over the horizon as he starts down the hill back to towards the cottage. Qui-Gon walks through the fields for a while, taking in the setting suns and the early shoots of grasses pushing through the soil and the dead, gray grasses left over from winter in the pastures. Then he comes upon a favorite small clearing, not so far from the cottage, a hollow tucked away amongst a copse of trees. There is a large boulder there where he has often come to reflect. 

He leans back against the boulder and folds his arms against his chest. It’s worse than I thought, he admits to himself. He does not want to be here. 

He had assumed he could handle anything Obi-Wan might bring with him - anger, resentment, worry. But he had not counted on the boy’s silent resignation. And for the first time since he had left Bandomeer, Qui-Gon wonders if he will be able to give his former padawan what he requires.

He sits there, unthinking, not noticing the passing time, until Tahl’s voice comes from the front step, calling him in.

\---

Obi-Wan disappears each night after their evening meal. He does not announce his departure, he just slips away quietly after the washing up, leaving Qui-Gon and Tahl alone in the cottage, and does not return until night has fallen. 

Qui-Gon does not think much of his absence the first night, or even the second. He supposes that Obi-Wan prefers to have time by himself, after spending his days so closely working with his former master, or perhaps that he prefers to prowl around restlessly and explore on his own, as he had so many times on their missions together. 

Let the boy have his space, Qui-Gon thinks, some peace and quiet might do him good, and he begins to use the time to work on his cyclical reports for the Council of Reassignment. He has become aware that he has far more paperwork to do as a master of the AgriCorps than he had as a mere groundskeeper. 

“It’s late,” Tahl says one night, standing up to go to bed. “Go call your fledgling, Qui-Gon, and put him to bed. I confess I had begun to have a hard time sleeping until we are all under one roof.”

Qui-Gon therefore puts away his datapad and slips on his jacket to venture out into the cold spring night. 

He walks along the fields briefly, noticing how the grain is almost tall enough to hit his knee, and when he does not see Obi-Wan near the toolshed or the surrounding fields, he broadens his search.

He does not see Obi-Wan right away. At last Qui-Gon finds him sitting on the boulder, hidden by the circle of trees that surrounds the hollow. 

The boy does not appear thoughtful, or even particularly peaceful. Qui-Gon is startled by how bleak his profile looks against the approaching night. 

Qui-Gon feels as though he has been a witness to something he was not meant to see. He backs away quietly, and turns back towards the cottage. He waits there on the front step until well past nightfall, until Obi-Wan comes limping down the hill. 

\----

The next day, Qui-Gon casts sidelong looks at Obi-Wan while he works in the field. The boy moves slower and slower over the course of the day, until it is clear he can no longer handle the pace. Still, he persists doggedly, tearing up weeds one by one.

“That’s enough,” Qui-Gon says eventually. “Take a break, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan crawls over to sit in the shade of a shinnock tree, the lacy green needles holding back the brightness of the sun. He drinks thistily from the canteen Qui-Gon passes over. He does not look at or touch his knee. Somehow this absence of interest tells Qui-Gon more than anything how the injury is bothering him. 

Qui-Gon clears his throat. “Tahl says you spoke to her. About your injury.”

“I did.” Obi-Wan is studying the flecks of soil on his boots. He does not appear bothered by Qui-Gon’s directness, so he presses on.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Obi-Wan? After it happened, after we returned from New Apsolon. We could have done something for you, so that this would not have become so debilitating.”

“It came on slowly,” Obi-Wan says softly. He hunches his shoulders. “It wasn’t bad, not at first. And you had other things to think about.”

“You mean Tahl.”

“She was so badly hurt. And you were so worried. I thought the pain would go away on its own. And—I did not want to distract you from something so important. I knew how much she meant to you.”

Qui-Gon taps his knuckles lightly on the toe of Obi-Wan’s boot. “I would have managed a worry or two for you as well,” he says gently. “You know that. Regardless of Tahl, of everything else. You should have come to me. To think that you felt you couldn’t—” 

He finds he can’t go on. He takes off his work gloves and turns them around distractedly, attempting to compose himself. “What can be done about it, now?” 

“The healers at the Temple said perhaps it would require surgery to repair the tear in the ligaments, eventually.”

“May I see?” Qui-Gon asks, and Obi-Wan hesitates, but finally nods. He peels back the fabric of his jumpsuit until his knee is revealed, swollen out of proportion and mottled with bruising. Qui-Gon presses on it gingerly, and the boy winces. 

“It looks painful,” he says, after some prodding. “I think we should get this looked at again, sooner rather than later.”

Obi-Wan rolls his pant leg back down. There is a frown between his eyes. “I don’t want to be a burden, Qui-Gon. I’m not your responsibility anymore.”

It is the first time Obi-Wan has called him by his name since he arrived on this planet. 

“I know,” Qui-Gon replies gently. “But I have a duty to you all the same. I was once your guardian. I cannot give up that responsibility so easily.”

“You did once before.” 

Obi-Wan is sinking back into the shadows under the shinnock tree. There is nothing to say to that. Qui-Gon does not try. 

\---

Qui-Gon returns to the hollow that evening. He watches the first sun go down, blazing orange and dark violet, and then he thinks, Yes. This is the right place. 

He clears out the dead grass on the edge of the circle of trees, scraping away the layers of dried shinnock needles. Then he takes the packet of starflower seeds and sows them carefully in the soil, burying them with his bare hands. 

  
  



	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obi-Wan practices katas at night, in the clearing behind the cottage. He moves through the forms without thought, relying only on muscle memory and instinct. Sun-strikes-the-ground, Petals-opening, Roots-running-underground. He had learned so many of these forms as Qui-Gon’s padawan. He does not want to forget those lessons, even though he is no longer a Jedi. 

Obi-Wan practices katas at night, in the clearing behind the cottage. He moves through the forms without thought, relying only on muscle memory and instinct. Sun-strikes-the-ground, Petals-opening, Roots-running-underground. He had learned so many of these forms as Qui-Gon’s padawan. He does not want to forget those lessons, even though he is no longer a Jedi. He pulls his memories close, straining to remember. 

He has found a sturdy branch of shinnock wood and cut off the limbs, shaping it into a light staff. It does not feel like his lightsaber in his hands. The weight is wrong in his grip, and the ropey wood tears apart in his hands; he often discovers splinters left behind in his palms. Still, he uses the staff as a counterweight to practice the forms Qui-Gon once taught him. 

He whips the staff over his head and then brings it down, slashing the air with an angled stroke, and as he brings the staff back overhead, he is wondering if he had ever truly had a chance of knighthood, if it had only been Qui-Gon’s dogged persistence that had brought him along so far.

_ Am I still a Jedi? Have I ever truly been one?  _ The doubts make him work harder, until the pain becomes unendurable and the staff drops from his limp hands.

Obi-Wan collapses on the boulder and practices the technique he has learned to use on the plants, drawing on the living Force around him and bringing it to bear on his injured knee. He is not sufficiently practiced at it enough to be truly effective for his injury. Still, the warmth of the Force suffusing through him soothes the persistent ache. This has become a habit of his, pulling on the living Force in this fashion. 

When he is finished, the dusk has long since become night. He picks up the staff, leaning it against the boulder, and drags himself down the hill back to the cottage. 

Qui-Gon is sitting on the front step, looking out into the night, his face cast in shadow by the light from the windows. Obi-Wan can tell by his look that he is meditating. He almost reaches out to him through the Force on instinct, but retreats back into himself.

“You didn’t have to wait up,” Obi-Wan says.

Qui-Gon rouses himself from his light trance. “I was thinking of you,” he answers. “So, you see, it’s no trouble.” 

He opens the door and follows Obi-Wan inside.

\---

“You seem rather more pensive than usual,” Tahl remarks the next morning. She is clearing the table of their tea things, moving the cups and teapot aside to begin her work on their monthly account statements. Qui-Gon is already gone, headed for the fields; Tahl had said dryly that she has never heard such a spring in his step as she does whenever he is abandoning their financial accounts to her. “Though I confess that I don't know exactly how much brooding young men require these days. Is this your usual amount, or is there something on your mind?”

Obi-Wan stops in the midst of tugging on his boots and considers her question. He is not quite sure how best to answer. His questions of belonging, of what path to take going forward, his doubts concerning his place in the Order. The ever-present memory of Krell, shadowing all these other worries. Perhaps the problem is there are too many things he is trying to comprehend; his mind jumps from one issue to the next without making much headway on any subject. 

“I only thought it might be something I could help with," Tahl says, her head tilted slightly. "Or would you rather discuss it with Qui-Gon?” 

“No, that’s not it,” he says hastily, wanting to reassure her. He has only just started to feel at ease around Tahl again. He does not want to lose the comfortable, teasing way she treats him. “I just don’t know where to begin.”

Her gold eyes flicker with green. His sense of her seems to disappear momentarily as she descends into the Force, sinking like a stone. Just as quickly, she rises back to the surface. Tahl has a master’s affinity for the Force, he realizes; just like Qui-Gon, she allows herself to be carried on its currents, always attuned to its slight shifts and subtle variations. He wonders again if he could have ever been that close to the Force, if it was a skill that he might have learned had he remained in the Order, or if it was something that could not be taught, that only some possessed and that he could not have ever been expected to achieve.

“You might try the Temple,” Tahl says. There is that Force-driven certainty in her voice. Obi-Wan has heard that note ringing many a time in his own master’s words. “That’s a good place to begin, when you don’t know where to start.”

Obi-Wan glances out the window doubtfully. Qui-Gon will be waiting for him to begin the day’s work. He says as much to Tahl.

“Not to worry - I’ll let him know where you’ve gone.” Tahl is smiling to herself. And instead of following Qui-Gon to the fields, Obi-Wan finds himself heading up the path that leads towards the mountains, and the Temple almost hidden there among the low-hanging clouds.

\---

There is a sense of waiting that comes to him when he walks through the Temple’s tall azure doors. Not a passive sense; rather, it feels like bright, curious eyes peering through the grass, interested and eager. 

Tahl had been correct. This is the right place to be.

He prowls up and down the silent corridors, looking into the empty rooms. Qui-Gon had told him these chambers were where the former Jedi had slept long ago, and he finds himself dreaming of the Jedi who had lived here once, making their plain, unremarkable beds in these dust-filled rooms, preparing their food and sharing it on long wooden tables, studying and working and playing with each other, a community that existed enclosed in these walls. Obi-Wan can almost feel the ancient Jedi as though they are still here, folding a set of sheets or calling down a hall to scold a noisy initiate. 

He halts in the door of one chamber. The sand-colored stone of the walls, the arched windows with patterns of fragmented glass still pressed into the panes, causing light to ripple over the floors and walls like a reflection of water. The arcaidan wood platform where the previous occupant had once laid their bedroll, the worn wood patterned with lines in strange geometric shapes. 

A good room, he thinks. And others just like it, down the hall. He wanders through the archives, pausing to glance at Tahl’s indices spread out on the low tables, and picks his way through the broken corridor to the inner courtyard. 

The heart of the Temple, he has heard Qui-Gon call it, and now he suddenly understands why. The Force is poised here, in the heart of the Temple; it is the slight difference between acceptance and anticipation. 

He sinks to the floor and closes his eyes. 


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obi-Wan is drawn back to the Temple day after day. He walks through the hallways and opens all the doors, peering into the empty rooms. He is never quite sure what he is looking for. There is only that anticipatory sense of certainty that what he is looking for is here, somewhere, if only he can find it. 

Obi-Wan is drawn back to the Temple day after day. He walks through the hallways and opens all the doors, peering into the empty rooms. He is never quite sure what he is looking for. There is only that anticipatory sense of certainty that what he is looking for is here, somewhere, if only he can find it. 

He spends one cool morning sweeping a century of dust and leaf litter from a block of rooms on the eastern side of the Temple. There is the one room he first discovered, and another small room, built underneath a staircase, with one corner slanting sharply underneath the steps. Then he carefully wipes down the fragmented-glass windows with a soft, damp cloth until the morning light pours through and makes patterns of waves on the sand-colored walls and floors. Then he works on removing the debris from the large, open kitchen area, sending orbweavers scurrying as he sweeps the floors and rafters.

After that, he spends some time exploring the remainder of the Temple, the observatory with its missing roof and other tall towers leading to small meditation chambers, but the climbing is hard on his knee, and his sense of the Force is telling him that what he’s looking for is somewhere else anyway. And it is not long after that when he discovers the archives.

Tahl is working in the archives the first time he walks through the doors, a stylus tucked in her hair in place of her usual long pins. She is standing on an ancient hoverlift in order to collect the manuscripts from a higher shelf. 

Obi-Wan hovers uncertainly at the door. Perhaps Tahl will not welcome an interruption. But she turns her head at his approach and smiles.

“Ah, Obi-Wan,” she says. “Just what I require, a respite from my solitude. Won’t you stay and keep me company for a while?”

“All right,” he answers. “If you’re sure you don’t mind.”

“I don’t,” Tahl assures him. Tahl climbs down from her perch, brushing dust off her robes. “Have you found what you were seeking?” 

“Not yet,” Obi-Wan admits. 

“This is a good place to visit, when you are looking for something,” she remarks. “You might help me, since you’re here. Can you fetch me those compartments of datacards?”

“Of course,” Obi-Wan says, and he takes her place on the hoverlift, passing the small boxes of datacards down to her until the shelf is empty. Then he pokes around while Tahl begins to scan their contents. 

There is more there than just banks of holobooks. He finds boxes of miscellany that Qui-Gon must have brought here from when he has worked on the Temple - crates of old clothing, and another crate filled with a set of rusting silver bells. There is an incomplete set of utensils for eating and cracked earthenware pots. There is that tugging feeling again, when he opens the box and brings out one of the bells, but he cannot determine the source. 

He drifts back over to Tahl, and she tells him about the records she has discovered, written by the Jedi who had once lived here, of their placid lives of meditation and research. 

“This sect of Jedi were interested in the stars,” Tahl tells him. “They thought one could find a deeper connection to the living Force by looking to the sky, and incorporated astronomy into their teachings.”

“To the living Force?” Obi-Wan asks, intrigued. “That seems an unlikely source to seek the living Force.”

“Most Jedi would agree,” Tahl says. “This Temple is deeply entrenched in the living Force already, by virtue of its location. But the Jedi who lived here could draw life-force from the planets and stars, even from a great distance.”

She lets him look through some of the manuscripts of the ancient Jedi. Obi-Wan browses through the daily entries, fascinated by the Jedi’s description of the seasons of Ornayx; star-notes mingled with observations of the wild herds of fauta that live in the thickets of the mountains, recipes for tinctures made from hesfodite leaves and singwai seeds and lecture notes for classes. There are many thousands of entries, many more than he would be able to read in day.

“You might look at these manuscripts again, if you are interested,” Tahl offers. And soon Obi-Wan finds himself visiting the archives every day. Tahl saves him manuscripts she thinks will interest him and orders him around kindly, and together they clear a section of the archive’s special collection of relics from the even older Whills sanctuary that once resided near the Temple. 

“The sanctuary was built on this mountain, about a half-kilometer away. There is nothing left but a few standing stones,” Tahl says. “You might ask Qui-Gon to take you there, if you are interested. He found the site not long after we arrived.”

The Force seems to chime in his ear. “All right,” says Obi-Wan. "I will."

\---

Qui-Gon comes to find them several days later, late in the evening after he has finished his tasks in the fields.  Obi-Wan has been reading the Temple manuscripts out loud to Tahl; she says she likes to hear his voice while she works. He breaks off his sentence when he sees Qui-Gon’s graying head at the door.

“So this is where you’ve been,” Qui-Gon remarks. “I’d been wondering where you’d gotten to. You missed dinner - unlike either one of you. So I thought I'd come to you.”

“Obi-Wan has been a great help to me,” Tahl says. “He just finished indexing the content of the Jarshandron documents.” 

“You mentioned you’d been working on a project here. I’d like to see what you’ve accomplished,” Qui-Gon says, so after they eat, Obi-Wan shows him the Temple manuscripts, opening them up to some of the daily entries, and then he takes Qui-Gon round the Temple and shows Qui-Gon the cleaned rooms and the emptied kitchen. 

“I could live here, give you your space back,” Obi-Wan suggests.

Qui-Gon glances heavenward at the cracked and leaking ceiling. “That could be the solution - but you might want to wait until we can afford to repair the roof.”

“You might be right,” Obi-Wan admits. The ceiling is quite bad in several areas of the Temple. Obi-Wan had been caught during a shower at the Temple one afternoon and had occasion to experience for himself the condition of the roof. 

It grows dark while they are still at the Temple, and when the first stars come out, Qui-Gon and Tahl climb up to the observatory, and Obi-Wan follows them. He sits propped up against a broken column, watching as they lie down beside each other and talk quietly, Qui-Gon pointing out the stars and planets that he knows, and Tahl correcting him whenever he gets one wrong.

“That star there, that should be Rieson, and just above it is C’ri,” Qui-Gon is saying. Obi-Wan can see his silhouette just barely, darker than the pale stone of the floor, his arms behind his head and one boot crossed over his knee.

“It can’t possibly be C’ri, dear,” Tahl replies gently, “as C’ri is not visible from our location.”

“You’re right, I’m sure,” Qui-Gon agrees. “And there is the Asru belt. I can see it quite clearly. You will not accuse me of fabricating that detail, I hope?”

“No, I will grant that you are correct in this instance,” Tahl returns, and Obi-Wan smiles to himself.

Qui-Gon’s voice continues, “The moons are up, shall I fetch one for you? I should like to give you something of great value, and I cannot imagine anything of greater value than a moon.” Obi-Wan can hear the rustle of robes when Qui-Gon’s hand steals over and takes Tahl’s. 

“What would I possibly do with a moon?” Tahl’s voice murmurs. “You had much better leave it in the sky where it belongs, Qui-Gon. Besides, I think it would miss its companion.”

Obi-Wan stands up and slips quietly back down the stairs, still smiling. He wants to let them have their moment, for he can see that that’s what their conversation is becoming. 

He settles down on the floor at the entrance to the Temple to wait for them. He is almost asleep when he finally hears footsteps echoing through the empty halls, and their voices calling out for him.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He finds the boy up the hill behind the cottage, practicing katas in the clearing. Qui-Gon halts on the edge of the glade, partially obscured by a screen of shinnock tree branches. There is Obi-Wan, a rough wooden staff in hand, sending his weapon whirling through the air and bringing it down low with tremendous force.
> 
> His former padawan moves through the patterns Qui-Gon had drilled into him so long ago. Obi-Wan’s form is a study of determination. He does not falter, his movements are sure and steady, though Qui-Gon is certain he is in pain. 
> 
> The boy has always known his own path, and never hesitated to follow it, no matter what it cost him. 

“I am feeling restless,” Qui-Gon announces to Tahl on this evening after their meal. She has opened all the windows and doors, and a wind blows clear through their cottage, rustling at the edges of Tahl’s star-maps and sending her long sleeves billowing until she shakes them back down again. 

He turns his face to meet the wind as it comes. It has been his turn to wash up afterwards, the kind of mindless task he has always enjoyed; yet the Force prickles across his forearms, insistent. There is somewhere he ought to be. “I think I shall step out for a walk.”

Tahl murmurs a vague assent, entranced over her maps, and so he steps out the door. He spends the first few moments walking critically around their cottage, noticing the way the frame leans slightly towards one side, the way the land falls around the structure, and tisking under his breath at the expense and trouble of repairs. 

Then he goes looking for Obi-Wan.

He finds the boy up the hill behind the cottage, practicing katas in the clearing. Qui-Gon halts on the edge of the glade, partially obscured by a screen of shinnock tree branches. There is Obi-Wan, a rough wooden staff in hand, sending his weapon whirling through the air and bringing it down low with tremendous force.

His former padawan moves through the patterns Qui-Gon had drilled into him so long ago. Obi-Wan’s form is a study of determination. He does not falter, his movements are sure and steady, though Qui-Gon is certain he is in pain. 

The boy has always known his own path, and never hesitated to follow it, no matter what it cost him.  __

_ Did he ever need me at all? _ Qui-Gon wonders, as he has so many times since their beginning.  _ Perhaps I only imagined that he ever did. He is on a journey to a destination I am no longer certain of. I am afraid that it will take him far from me again. At least I can go on walking his path with him a ways yet. _

Obi-Wan begins a cadence of rapid slashes, skyward at first and then dropping into a low crouch, a pattern Qui-Gon recognizes finally as a Shien form. 

“I didn’t teach you that,” he says out loud, and the boy startles out of his trance. “Did you learn that cadence from Krell?”

Obi-Wan braces against his staff and comes back up from his crouch slowly, leaning hard on his good leg. He releases a breath of air. “No,” he answers. “Not from him.”

His eyes are guarded. So unlike the boy he had known that Qui-Gon is momentarily taken aback. And Mace had harbored suspicions about Krell. He knows he must tread lightly here.

There had once been a time when Obi-Wan had not kept anything back from him. 

“Mind your technique,” Qui-Gon says, as lightly as he can. “You dropped your right shoulder on that turn—it will unbalance you, if you are not careful.”

Obi-Wan rests his staff against a shinnock tree. “It’s more difficult, without my lightsaber,” he admits, panting slightly. “I find it challenging to compensate for the extra weight of the staff.” 

“You’ve gotten quicker. You’ve been practicing,” Qui-Gon responds. “I can tell.” This could be any conversation they’d had in a training room over the past five years. The thought sends a pang through his chest.

“I didn’t want to forget. You taught me so much—I did not want to lose all that I learned.”

“I do not think you could forget anything you committed to your formidable memory, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan blinks at him, then lowers himself to the ground carefully. The Force moves through the clearing almost unobtrusively, and Qui-Gon is startled to realize that he is sensing Obi-Wan, the way he reaches out to the Force, centering himself and balancing himself against his pain almost without thought. 

Obi-Wan releases the pain into the Force, drawing tight on the life force of their surroundings to anchor himself, leaving only a persistent ache. Qui-Gon wonders momentarily how long he has relied on this method of relief. 

He settles down in the clearing across from Obi-Wan, lounging against the trunk of a tree and stretching his legs out. “Something tells me you are struggling with a problem.”

He catches a hint of grin from Obi-Wan. “How can you tell?”

“You always take to the practice rooms when you are bent out of shape over something. Come, why don’t you tell me what is on your mind?”

For a moment, he thinks that Obi-Wan will speak. But in the end, the boy just shakes his head. 

“I would like to hear, when you are ready to tell me,” Qui-Gon offers gently. But Obi-Wan only looks at the ground. Very well. He does not think that he will accomplish much by forcing the issue. 

“I see that you have been practicing a higher awareness of your environment,” Qui-Gon notes instead. “Have you been studying the Sokan principals?”

The boy relaxes when he realizes that Qui-Gon will not press him further about Krell. “A bit,” Obi-Wan admits. 

“You might ask Tahl about that, if you wish to learn more,” he advises. “She is very qualified in that area.”

Obi-Wan looks startled. “I didn’t know that.”

“Oh yes—that’s how she would always get past my guard,” Qui-Gon recounts fondly. “We both studied Ataru extensively, and we were almost equally matched, though I had a slight advantage in reach and strength, so she often got around me by using our environment to her advantage.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“Ask her. She might grace us with a demonstration. There is much she could teach you, if you would like to learn.”

“I never thought to ask her,” Obi-Wan says guiltily. “I’d just assumed she wouldn’t want to be reminded of—well. You both left the Order, after all.”

“We may have left the Order, but that does not mean we are any less interested in our former passions. Or that we would be unwilling to teach you, if you should want it. I could spar with you, if you’d like.”

Obi-Wan looks up at that, interest brightening his face. But then he shrugs with one shoulder. “I haven’t got a lightsaber anymore.”

“We do not require lightsabers to practice,” Qui-Gon says lightly. “Nor do we require them to be Jedi. I am sure I can find another stick around here.”

Silence falls. Qui-Gon lets it descend between them. It is not a shatterpoint, filled with unspoken words and weighted down with turmoil. This is the patient silence Qui-Gon has learned to sit with, to learn from. He closes his eyes and lets himself drift. In the Force, Obi-Wan is clear, almost translucent, no longer maintaining the shielding of unrelenting blankness that Qui-Gon has felt from him so often.

“I miss my lightsaber,” Obi-Wan confides. The words come out slowly. Qui-Gon opens his eyes and regards him. The boy is scraping his nail against a bit of bark left on his staff. “Of everything I left behind in the Temple, I miss that the most. I feel as though a piece of me is missing. The part of me that used to be a Jedi.”

Qui-Gon chooses his answer carefully. 

“You wanted so terribly to be a Jedi knight, when we first met. It was your dream, your passion. I thought it was my Force-given duty to see you through to that goal. And I wished to be able to give you your heart’s desire, because you came to mean so much to me. But now I wonder—not that you were never meant to be a knight, Obi-Wan, but that perhaps I should have tried harder to show you that there are many paths. 

“I am afraid I let you go on thinking there was only one kind of Jedi worth becoming while you were my padawan. Now you must seek out for yourself what it means to be a Jedi, just as I have had to reevaluate all that I thought I knew about the matter myself—a difficult lesson for a man of my advanced years. You are still a Jedi, Obi-Wan, no matter your official rank or title.”

Obi-Wan absorbs his words. 

“I know,” he replies wistfully, “but I can’t help feeling as though I have lost something that I will never get back.”

Qui-Gon nods, understanding. He unhooks the lightsaber hanging from his belt and holds it out to Obi-Wan. “Then I will help you find it.”

  
  
  



	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tahl meets Obi-Wan in the clearing in the brisk morning air, the hem of her long tunics slightly dampened by the wet grass. 
> 
> “Are you ready?” she asks. In the quiet of the morning, she can hear the slightest twist of his hand around the hilt of the lightsaber he carries. 
> 
> “Yes, master,” he responds.
> 
> “Let us begin,” she says, and ignites her own saber. 

Tahl meets Obi-Wan in the clearing in the brisk morning air, the hem of her long tunics slightly dampened by the wet grass. 

“Are you ready?” she asks. In the quiet of the morning, she can hear the slightest twist of his hand around the hilt of the lightsaber he carries. 

“Yes, master,” he responds.

“Let us begin,” she says, and ignites her own saber. 

\---

“Tell me what you see,” Tahl says on their next training session, before she allows him to raise his blade, and Obi-Wan obediently describes their surroundings. The shadow of light from the two suns coming through the trees, the tall grass that brushes the tops of their boots, the boulder on the edge of the clearing.

“There is a small patch of wildflowers growing there,” Obi-Wan finishes. “Just about to bloom—I'm not sure what kind of flower they are.”

Tahl lets his words wash over her, painting a picture in her mind. She reminds him, “You used your eyes, Obi-Wan—now expand your other senses.”

So he does. He tells her about the sound a fauta mother and fawn make as their long legs move whisper-soft through the grass, about the northeasterly wind sending the treetops bending, about the uneven ground underfoot, with rocks that can turn an ankle and small depressions that can catch a boot by surprise, the sudden chill of cooler air when you step out of the sunlight and into the shade.

“Now use what you know,” Tahl tells him, and she holds out her blade in invitation.

\---

Tahl can feel Qui-Gon’s eyes on them from afar. He says nothing about her training methods, or about how hard she might drive Obi-Wan during a sparring session; he makes no comment when she collars the boy and has him escort her on walks around the Temple in order to describe what he senses. Tahl spends long afternoons tromping through the foothills at the edge of the mountains and alongside the river up to where it becomes a spring, and has Obi-Wan describe it all to her. 

He stays out of sight during their training sessions, but Tahl can sense Qui-Gon hovering nearby, carefully not observing them, but terribly interested in the proceedings all the same. And there is something else, too, she notices when she reaches out for him in the Force. A small vein of hurt, that Obi-Wan should prefer her tutelage over his. 

He does not like to be left out.

Qui-Gon might describe the world to her, but it is Tahl who interprets his silences. She understands what he does not say better than anyone. At night, he tells her of the fields and gardens, his solitary ventures out into the rain. He does not say that he is lonesome. But she knows that he is.

He cares so much for his students, she reflects. At his heart, Qui-Gon is a teacher. He is always wanting to share himself with others, to open their eyes and pass on what he has learned. 

And I took him away from that, she reflects, and spends hours locked in meditation in the great atrium of the Temple, casting about for a solution. 

\---

The rainy season comes around then, right on schedule. Rivers and creeks spring up overnight at the base of the hills, and the Temple’s roof leaks horrendously in most places except for the archives, where Tahl has set up one of their precious weatherproofing shield generators to protect the treasures within. 

Tahl spends most of her days listening to the rain fall from the inside of the cottage. Qui-Gon makes his regular rounds of the fields, coming back with his hair dripping wet and speaking with enthusiasm as the crops double and triple in size. 

Obi-Wan takes long walks in the rain. Practicing my lessons, he tells Tahl cheekily. One morning he goes out and returns with only one boot and four half-drowned tikkal kits.

He opens his jacket and lets the kits tumble into Tahl’s lap. The kits make pitiful squeaks in her arms, and her tunic is quickly soaked. 

“I found them by the clearing,” Obi-Wan explains. “They had washed out of their den, poor things. I couldn’t leave them.”

Tahl can hear the uneven pattern of his footfalls through the cottage, first the slap of a boot on rough wood, then a squelching noise of wet sock. “And what happened to your boot?” she inquires.

She can sense his embarrassment. “I recovered the kits—but the price was my other boot.”

Obi-Wan heats up some ganto milk on the heating coil, and they are both busily nursing tikkal kits with linen napkins dipped in warm milk by the time Qui-Gon returns. 

“What’s all this?” he asks, baffled. 

“Your boy’s a soft touch,” Tahl tells him, and Obi-Wan protests hastily, “They would have _drowned_.”

“Ah, well,” Qui-Gon replies, dipping his hand into her lap and retrieving a dried and sated tikkal kit. “What’s another four mouths, I suppose. Though they shall have to sleep with you, Obi-Wan. I haven’t the space for them.”

“I don’t mind,” Obi-Wan answers, dignified, and makes a nest of blankets for them in his corner of the room. Yet Tahl is not at all surprised when Qui-Gon disappears in the middle of the night and returns with a basket of mewling kits. 

“They needed another feeding—and he needs rest,” Qui-Gon explains. “The boy will stay up all night with them, if I let him.”

The bed creaks as Qui-Gon sits on the edge. The squeaking of the kits fades as they settle for the night. 

“Thank you,” Qui-Gon says at last. “For taking an interest in Obi-Wan.”

He does not say more than this. She can feel him in the Force, very close to her, like a sheet over her skin. His emotions spill over his shields and through their connection, a steady trickle, just enough for her to feel his constant presence. No one has ever come any closer to her than he has. She touches his rounded shoulders and lets herself follow the thread of the Force to the heart of him, where he keeps all his emotions, where he is just Qui-Gon and nothing other than that, impossible and patient and stubborn, serene and wracked with grief. He feels so much, that’s what she loves about him, what she’s always loved about him.

She rests her cheek on his shoulder. “You love him,” Tahl replies. “How could I not open my heart for someone so important to you?”

\---

Obi-Wan is growing restless, trapped inside by the rain and hampered by his own lack of footwear, so one morning Tahl takes him back to the small shed where she keeps her kiln and shows him how to make pots. She starts him off with a clump of reddish-brown clay that she presses into his hand. 

“Is this part of my training?” he asks dubiously. 

“Oh, certainly.”

There is the wet sound of clay being squashed by reluctant fingers. “I think you might be playing a joke on me, master.”

“This is a terribly important Jedi training ritual, padawan. Please don’t desecrate the solemnity of this ceremony by accusing me of playing practical jokes.”

She can almost hear his frown. “I should be doing something useful,” Obi-Wan objects, and she buries a smile in the vase she is lifting out of nothing on her wheel. 

She blows out a breath of air in exasperation. “Just try this,” she tells him. 

Tahl can sense his movements across the table, the reverberation of clay being thumped down hard on the table’s surface and then rolls flat, then the little movements of Obi-Wan scooping the clay back into a ball. It is quiet work, except for the turn of her wheel. Eventually he speaks.

“Are you going to marry him?” Obi-Wan asks casually. 

Tahl flattens down her vase to nothing and begins to draw it up again. “I think I might,” she answers.

“Well, you ought to. He loves you.”

“You present a compelling case in his favor. I rather think I shall. Will you be staying for the ceremony?”

Hesitation. Then, “I don’t know where else I would be.” More silence, then Obi-Wan says, in a different tone of voice, “Here, I’m finished.”

He hands over his lump of clay, and Tahl runs her fingers across the cool, damp surface of his creation. A pinch pot, made by pressing his thumb inside the ball of clay and squeezing around the rim. Any Temple child might have made something similar in an arts and crafts class. 

“Very good, padawan. You have made your master proud.”

She can tell he is laughing silently—it’s from her growing sense of him in the Force, the ability to tell when Obi-Wan is amused. 

“What should I do next?” he asks.

“Leave it to dry,” she advises him. “On that shelf, over there.” She hears him stand to place the pot on the shelf she had indicated. Then she pinches off another piece of clay and passes it to him. 

“Now make another one.”

\---

It makes for a bit of excitement when they receive their first AgriCorps supply shipment, air-dropped onto their neighbour’s field. Qui-Gon goes out with their ancient landspeeder and hauls the supplies back, and they all crowd around to see what they have been sent.

“Tell me what you see,” Tahl prompts, and Obi-Wan describes it all to her. 

“Seeds, heating lamps, grow lights, glow orbs, more seeds - haven’t we got enough seeds already, Qui-Gon? - jumpsuits, a new datapad, updated Holonet subscription chips, oh, thank the Force, new boots. And a new bedstead.” His tone is appreciative. 

Qui-Gon’s voice, suitably dry: “You see, Obi-Wan? The Force provides.”

“The Force, and the fact that I requisitioned one from the Council of Reassignment,” Tahl remarks. Sounds from the corner of the room indicate that Obi-Wan is already setting up the lightweight bedstead and unfolding his bedroll over it.

“To think, that we have actually received what was requested in a timely manner. Indeed, most mysterious.”

\---

The rain clears up after several weeks. Tahl is glad enough to feel the suns on her face, to be standing in a field and being warmed throughout. She takes Obi-Wan back to the clearing to renew their training sessions. She can still feel Qui-Gon, no doubt invisible but hovering nearby. 

So she invites him in.

“Qui-Gon,” she calls out, her voice whipping around the shinnock trees and down the hill. “We will need you for this. Won't you come lend a hand?”

She hears the grasses rustle with his approach. "Nothing would please me more," he answers, very close. "I am at your service." 

  
  



	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tikkal kits wean off the ganto milk and busily set to work making nuisances of themselves. They prowl around underfoot in the cottage, gnawing on the posts of the table and chairs and leaving teeth marks in Qui-Gon’s boots. 
> 
> “Er, Obi-Wan,” says Qui-Gon that morning, holding up his boots and inspecting the miniscule tears in the leather. “I believe your pets require their breakfast.”

The tikkal kits wean off the ganto milk and busily set to work making nuisances of themselves. They prowl around underfoot in the cottage, gnawing on the posts of the table and chairs and leaving teeth marks in Qui-Gon’s boots. 

“Er, Obi-Wan,” says Qui-Gon that morning, holding up his boots and inspecting the miniscule tears in the leather. “I believe your pets require their breakfast.”

Obi-Wan winces. “Their teeth are coming in, that’s why,” he explains. He had woken up the night before to find a kit gnawing feverishly on his fingers. 

Qui-Gon picks the culprit up, and the kit squirms in his large hands. This kit is a shade more reddish than brown, with cream colored spots dotting its back and running underneath its belly up to its nose. The brindled brown-and-black tail lashes back and forth as it wriggles in Qui-Gon’s hold. “No manners whatsoever,” he says indulgently. 

“I’ll try to teach them some,” Obi-Wan assures him. 

“No need,” Qui-Gon replies, “I quite like them as they are.” And he sets off for the fields. 

The kits have no respect for personal property. It seems to Obi-Wan that he is forever wading through the wake of their destruction and apologizing to Qui-Gon and Tahl. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again to Tahl, after the kits climb up on the shelves in the kitchen and knock down several of her vases. He spends that evening sorting the fragments into piles of green and blue and yellow for Tahl to repair. 

“Never mind, padawan,” advises Tahl. “They’ll perform admirable work as rodent-catchers when they’re older. We can put up with all manner of youthful indiscretions until then.” 

The kits curl around him in his bed at night, and Obi-Wan can feel their vague distress needling at him through the Force. He curls under his blanket, and one kit nips fretfully at his hand. Busybody, Tahl has dubbed this kit. He places his hand on its back, and tries to soothe its pain away, the method he uses to release his own pain into the Force when his knee aches. He has never attempted this with an animal before; he starts off with a very light touch of the Force, meant only to soothe and comfort rather than actually heal. 

It seems to work. The kit relaxes, curling a black paw around its nose. Obi-Wan plays with the Force a little in that same manner. He knows what the healers advise against using the Force for healing purposes unless one has been trained specifically in the healing arts; it’s too easy to instinctively use one’s own life-force to heal another being, with the great danger of drawing too much of one’s own life-force away and divesting your body of energy until depleted. Trained healers learn to draw on the Force instead, reaching out instead of within. 

Obi-Wan has learned how to do that in some small way, working with the damaged and diseased plants at the AgriCorps. Plants require so little in the way of healing energy, the barest of Force-touches can help a wilted seedling thrive again. But for the more damaged plants, it takes gentle coaxing and Force-application to bring them back to life. 

He shifts on the mattress, and his knee twinges sharply. On instinct, he tries to draw on the Force for healing, but it eludes him; his skill in healing is not great enough for the task. 

Instead Obi-Wan takes a deep breath, and releases the pain back into the Force, where all things are surrendered in due time. 

\---

Obi-Wan remembers to ask Qui-Gon about the standing stones the next evening. Somehow they have formed a habit of cooking the last meal of the day together. Obi-Wan couldn’t say when that had started. It is silent work shared between them. Obi-Wan sits at the table and chops the vegetables and roots Qui-Gon passes over in a bowl, while Qui-Gon prepares the mashed tubers they seem to have at every meal at this point in the harvest. 

“I was thinking about the standing stones,” Obi-Wan says, breaking the silence, and Qui-Gon looks at him with one eyebrow raised. “Tahl said you knew about them. I wondered if you could show me.”

Qui-Gon seems pleased to be asked. “We can go tomorrow,” he answers. He passes Obi-Wan more oisfa root to slice, and they fall back to their work, but Qui-Gon starts to whistle a tuneless song while he starts the tea. And the following afternoon, Qui-Gon cuts off his work in the fields early in order to make the trip to the standing stones. 

They climb through the low foothills of the mountain, the tikkal kits chasing after them. Obi-Wan’s leg is aching by the time they reach the stones. 

The stones are large slabs of arvanite, towering over Qui-Gon’s head, pale green and opalescent, with swirls of darker green and light blue cutting through the arvanite. The stones stand in a clearing in the midst of a shinnock wood, where the earth is covered in many layers of dried leaves; their boots make no more sound than a whisper. 

“They are beautiful,” Obi-Wan says in surprise. He isn’t sure what he had expected, only that it was not this. He can feel the Force here, waiting patiently in the corners of the shinnock wood and rising up curiously to meet them. The kits tumble around the clearing, sticking their white noses into mossy corners and then darting away, sneezing and shaking cobwebs from their whiskers. 

“These stones are all that remains of a Whills temple that predates the Jedi Temple here on Ornayx,” Qui-Gon tells him. “I’ve no doubt Tahl has told you all she has learned about the guardians who lived here.”

Obi-Wan sinks to the ground in the center of the stones, bracing his arm around his knee carefully. “It feels good here,” he says. “Like the Temple.”

“I suspect both temples were placed here for a reason,” Qui-Gon says. “Not that any of the documents refer to it other than obliquely—but you might be able to determine that reason for yourself.”

A challenge. It reminds him of their early days, Qui-Gon’s patient instruction, and Obi-Wan searching for answers constantly. Qui-Gon never teaches in any straightforward way. He has always preferred to let Obi-Wan do the work. 

Obi-Wan closes his eyes and reaches out to meet the Force of the wood. Then he opens his eyes. “A nexus,” he says out loud, and Qui-Gon nods in acknowledgement. 

“A nexus of the Force,” he agrees. “The guardians and then the Jedi maintained the link here, until wilderness reclaimed the temples. Part of what I hope to accomplish here is to restore the link.”

“I’d like to see that,” Obi-Wan says. 

Qui-Gon is prowling around, smoothing his hands over the arvantite slabs and wiping away moss and lichen. He asks, “Well, Obi-Wan, have you found what you were looking for?”

“I’m not sure,” he hedges. Part of it, he thinks, at least a part, though not the entirety of what he has been seeking. “I think there’s something else.” 

Obi-Wan meditates for a while, then opens his eyes. When he looks up, Qui-Gon is watching him.

Qui-Gon says, “You are unhappy here.” It is not a question.

He is taken aback. Just like his master, he thinks with exasperation. Figuring out what he is thinking and feeling, even before Obi-Wan had discovered his own emotions. In his first few months as a padawan, he had often wondered if Qui-Gon reserved that attention for a select few, and if there were any drawbacks to being the recipient of that focus. Since then, he has witnessed how Qui-Gon turns his watchful gaze on beings great and small, from saplings to the beings crowded around a table on an outer rim world. Qui-Gon, he has come to realize, is simply so attuned to others that he at times fails to attend to himself. 

Obi-Wan drops his chin on his knee. “Not unhappy,” he protests. “Just—not content.” 

“Where would you rather be?” Qui-Gon asks him gently. “Back on Bandomeer?”

“No. Not there.”

“Then where? Coruscant, the Temple?”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan says. “I wish I was back at the Temple, and you were there, and we were Jedi again.”

“Ah,” Qui-Gon says. “I see.”

“I know it can’t be like that anymore,” Obi-Wan says. He is suddenly frustrated with his own feelings. Why should he cling so stubbornly to the past? He knows he cannot go back to the way things were before. He knows that—and yet. Qui-Gon had asked him where he wished to be, and he has answered truthfully. If he wishes to be anywhere else, it is not a place but a time: He wishes to be a padawan with a master again, when circumstances seemed straightforward and knighthood was a goal shared between them.

“You wish to go back to the way things were before,” Qui-Gon acknowledges. “Our circumstances are different now. I have changed, and so have you. I altered the course of our lives when I made the decision to leave with Tahl.”

“It’s strange,” Obi-Wan admits. “She used to be just another master at the Temple. And now she’s someone that—well, the one you fell in love with.” 

The word feels awkward in his mouth. He was never accustomed to speaking of love as a Jedi, to allowing room for such a thing to exist and to be spoken of freely. 

“Is it so strange to think that I might love?” Qui-Gon asks. His voice is almost wistful. It takes Obi-Wan by surprise. 

He has never doubted Qui-Gon’s devotion to Tahl. It has been evident since the first moment Obi-Wan had seen him lift her off the floor of a filthy cell on Melida/Daan and cradle her to his chest. 

His master has always carried his love so deeply and quietly inside his heart. What might it mean if Qui-Gon, whose habit of loving has always taken the shape of silent affection, could suddenly find it within himself to speak of such things?

But some questions should not be asked out loud, even to Qui-Gon, who knows him so well. He does not know what to say, so instead he shrugs.

“Let’s head back,” Obi-Wan says. He stands up, and his leg almost buckles underneath his weight. When he finds his footing, he finds Qui-Gon frowning.

“It’s nothing,” he assures him. He brushes the dried leaves off his hands. “Let’s go.”

\---

The following morning, Obi-Wan is walking to the fields just behind Qui-Gon when his leg gives out. He takes a step, and his knee buckles underneath him. 

He goes down, and for some time there is nothing but black around the edges of his vision. 

Slowly the blackness recedes. Rough fingers are tapping lightly against his cheek. 

“Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon is saying. “Obi-Wan, padawan. Wake up.”

  
  
  



	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I can walk,” Obi-Wan grits through his teeth, every stubborn inch of him obviously willing it to be so. But Qui-Gon can see he really can’t. So he wraps Obi-Wan’s arm over his shoulder and braces him as they walk back to the cottage. 
> 
> It is a slow journey back, though the distance is not far. 

Obi-Wan falls to the ground. He does not come back up.

Qui-Gon crouches by his side, calling for him by voice and through the Force. He keeps his voice quiet, his movements calm and hurry. There is no need to rush, Obi-Wan, he says, just take your time. Return to me, when you can. 

He touches the boy’s cheek, patiently waiting for a response, until Obi-Wan at last opens his eyes and looks up at him. 

“Master?” Obi-Wan asks, and the familiar title spoken between is an echo of years past, familiar and yet strange. Qui-Gon feels relief course through him then, easing a fearfulness he not allowed himself to acknowledge until that moment. He has never wished to see Obi-Wan in pain.

First Qui-Gon has him lie still and drink a sip from the canteen before attempting to sit up, and then stand.

“I can walk,” Obi-Wan grits through his teeth, every stubborn inch of him obviously willing it to be so. But Qui-Gon can see he really can’t. So he wraps Obi-Wan’s arm over his shoulder and braces him as they walk back to the cottage. 

It is a slow journey back, though the distance is not far. Obi-Wan does not flinch at the rocks or hills, but he leans more heavily on Qui-Gon to compensate.

They arrive at the threshold, and he eases Obi-Wan down on his bedstead. Tahl, who has not yet left for the Temple that morning, comes to stand by his shoulder. 

“I think it’s time to take a look at this,” Qui-Gon says, and Obi-Wan nods in agreement, closing his eyes.

Qui-Gon untucks the hem of his pants from where it is pushed down inside Obi-Wan’s boot and rolls the hem up, and looks at the injury soberly. The knee is swollen underneath the brace Obi-Wan occasionally wears for support. Perhaps more often than not lately; Qui-Gon does not know. 

How little he has been able to help the boy since bringing him here. How little he has done for his padawan. 

Qui-Gon casts for the Force, attempting to determine the depth of the injury. He must fight past the shields emanating from Obi-Wan, even in the midst of pain. He tries to find his way through the connection they have always shared, and finds only solid blankness. He taps against the white walls. You’ll have to let me in, he tries to explain to the boy. It’s all right. I won’t hurt you. Let me in, now. And finally Obi-Wan seems to hear him. Slowly the shields come down. Qui-Gon does not try to push. He lets Obi-Wan determine how much to reveal. 

A deep ache there that Qui-Gon recalls from his previous examination, a sharp new pain like a band of white flaring in front of his vision. There is not much he can do, even with connection to the living Force. He is no trained healer, and repairwork of this magnitude eludes him. 

Tahl brings Obi-Wan something for the pain, taken from their field kit, strong but without nuance—it will not help much with the swelling, but it might allow Obi-Wan to avoid noticing the pain, for a while. Obi-Wan swallows the capsules and lets Qui-Gon carefully maneuver a bundle of blankets under his leg to elevate it. 

The medication works swiftly. Obi-Wan closes his eyes a few moments later and falls into a heavy sleep.

The tikkals rise up on their hind legs and nose at him, chuffing worriedly. Then the one Qui-Gon calls Imp jumps up on Obi-Wan’s chest, turns around and curls up, and the others follow, settling around the crook of his elbow and side, Busybody and Slip and the one they all call Grandmaster, due to his perpetual sleepy, half-lidded eyes. 

“Poor boy,” Tahl says. “This has been a long time coming.” Qui-Gon knows she is right. He should have forced the issue sooner, rather than wait for events to unfold. 

\---

Qui-Gon rouses the boy. When Obi-Wan wakes up, he says, “I believe it is time that we find a medcenter to assist with this problem. There’s one not terribly far from here, in the capital city. Several hours, by landspeeder.”

He is prepared for a joke or evasion. But—“I’d like that,” is all Obi-Wan says, and closes his eyes again. It sends a warning flare through Qui-Gon, and also a sense of surprise. He will not have to fight against Obi-Wan on this, now.

He takes Tahl aside before they leave. He keeps his voice quiet, so that Obi-Wan should not hear.

“I’ll take Obi-Wan there,” he begins. “You might choose to remain here.”

Tahl’s mouth tightens. “You are always trying to keep the responsibility for him squarely on your shoulders. Do you truly think I would let you make this journey alone? He’s my padawan as well, Qui-Gon.”

Qui-Gon pulls back. “I only meant to spare you the travel,” he replies stiffly. “It will be a difficult transport.”

Her fierce expression changes. She reaches up to run her fingers through his beard, smiling a little. 

“And when have I ever been afraid of difficult?” she quips. “I did choose you, after all. You never do make things easy, Qui-Gon.”

He does not know if he is pleased at her insistence or frustrated by her words. He decides to settle for being pleased. He has never been quite sure how he would ever manage without Tahl, after all.

\--- 

The AgriCorps ship has long since been recalled and returned to Coruscant. There is only the ancient landspeeder that seems to run thanks to an endless amount of reparations on Qui-Gon’s part. “I’ll prepare the landspeeder,” he tells Obi-Wan, and leaves him with Tahl, preparing for the trip. 

Qui-Gon tries the ignition, and nothing happens. He closes his eyes and grimly recalls the day he purchased the thing from their neighbor two farms down. The man had laughed as he passed over the registration datachips. Good luck, he had said, chuckling. Qui-Gon had been confident in his ability to repair any mechanical issues that might require attention. He had returned feeling rather pleased at the deal. 

He tries the ignition again. 

Two attempts at turning over the engine, and the landspeeder is running. Qui-Gon brings it as close to the entrance of the cottage as he can manage. 

Tahl appears at the door, one arm wrapped securely around Obi-Wan’s shoulders. One tikkal tries to dart out of the door under their feet.

“No, Slip,” Tahl chides absently. “You stay here.” She moves the kit back with her foot, then closes the tikkals inside the cottage and locks the door behind her.

Qui-Gon helps her settle Obi-Wan in the backseat of the landspeeder, his leg outstretched and leg elevated. Tahl chooses to sit in the back with him, though there is not much room. She pulls Obi-Wan’s feet into her lap.

Qui-gon programs the coordinates of the nearest medcenter into the navicomputer, and sets off.

\--

They do not arrive until well into evening. The medical complex at the capital city is large. There is a sizable crowd in the waiting rooms, even once they move beyond the initial instance entrance and triage. 

Qui-Gon, with knowledge born from many years of visiting such establishments, estimates that they will be waiting until well into the night. He finds a quiet corner with several chairs and they settle there, Obi-Wan next to Tahl and Qui-Gon across from them.

A registration droid comes over to take Obi-Wan’s medical profile and fill out forms. Obi-Wan sits up long enough to take the datapad and fill out the forms. Qui-Gon hands the droid Obi-Wan’s identification data crystal that details him as a member of the Jedi Service Corps, with all the benefits and medical assistance vouchers that go along with the Corps. 

There is nothing to do for a long time except wait.

Hours pass. 

“You don’t have to stay,” Obi-Wan says, not looking at him. “You and Tahl can go find a place to stay for the night—who knows how long the wait will be. I’ll be all right here. I can call when they’ve found a place for me.”

‘You’re always trying to leave the door open for me,” Qui-Gon muses. “I suppose I taught you that. But we came here in order to stay with you.”

Tahl moves her arm to rest around his shoulders and settles her chin on the top of his head. "I am quite comfortable, padawan."

Obi-Wan does not say anything in response. But when Qui-Gon glances over, he is leaning against Tahl’s side. 

\---

It is almost midnight by the time Obi-Wan is taken back and examined again, then brought to another room. Tahl goes with him. 

Qui-Gon waits. Then he gets a comm from Tahl. A room number, several levels up.

Tahl is slipping out of the door as he arrives at the room. “Qui-Gon,” she says. “There you are.”

“How is he?” Qui-Gon asks.

She brushes her hand against his arm briefly. “He’s asking for you.”


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You asked for me,” Qui-Gon says.
> 
> The words feel clumsy in his mouth. “I wondered if you might meditate with me. Before I go.”
> 
> Qui-Gon’s mouth shifts in a slow smile. “Certainly,” he replies.

I keep forgetting to link it, but the incredible artist [emily-escott](https://emily-escott.tumblr.com/) illustrated this amazing commission for me! I said I wanted an awkward family portrait of my favorite Jedi family, and it turned out so beautifully. You can find it on tumblr [here!](https://emily-escott.tumblr.com/post/622953886606622720/heres-a-commission-i-just-finished-for)

\---

The room that Obi-Wan is given is small and sterile, only large enough for a medical bed and the hoverchair parked near the door, and startlingly geometrical in the way of most Ornayxian architecture. The room has been constructed in a hexahedron shape, with a raised ceiling patterned in blue and white ceramic tiles. 

Obi-Wan is considering the tiles above his head when the repulsar door opens and Qui-Gon steps inside. Perhaps, he thinks, this ceiling is what he will see first when he awakens afterward. 

“You asked for me,” Qui-Gon says.

The words feel clumsy in his mouth. “I wondered if you might meditate with me. Before I go.”

Qui-Gon’s mouth shifts in a slow smile. “Certainly,” he replies. 

Obi-Wan does not expect him to come to the foot of his bed and perch on the side of it. But his closeness makes him feel comforted. 

“What are you feeling, in this moment?” Qui-Gon asks, just as he had so many times when Obi-Wan had been his padawan. 

“Frightened.” The admission comes easily. He had thought it would have been more difficult to admit such a feeling to Qui-Gon. There had been a time, early on in his apprenticeship, when Obi-Wan had not felt able to confess any emotions to his master at all. It had taken the better part of two years before Obi-Wan had been able to initiate these sorts of conversations. 

Qui-Gon looks at him quizzically. “Of the pain?”

“No, not that.”

Qui-Gon takes on a certain tone of his, measured and contemplative, unjudging. It is the voice in which he tracks down the motivations of political factions and solves disputes, the tone he uses for theoretical astrophysics and puzzling out the drought emotions of his padawan. He will help Obi-Wan trace down the source of his unease in just the same manner as solving any obscure navigational equation, and that thought makes Obi-Wan smile. “The surgery, then?”

Obi-Wan judges his feelings. There is only the barest aversion to the idea of the forthcoming medical procedure. “Not particularly. Nothing about what is happening right now, here.” 

He ought to be prepared for this moment, Obi-Wan thinks ruefully. He has known it was coming since he returned with Krell after that last fateful mission. Plenty enough time to consider all that would transpire with a minor surgical operation. And he has spent nights in the halls of healing before. Nothing about this ought to surprise him.

“I wonder,” Qui-Gon says then, slowly, “I wonder if the source of your apprehension is for what comes after your surgery. Tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. It is a long journey to recovery from an injury, padawan.”

As he so often has, his master has identified an insecurity inside him that Obi-Wan has not even seen in himself before. He bends his head in response to Qui-Gon’s words. “Yes. I am afraid of what will happen afterwards.”

“Tahl and I will be there to assist you, surely you know that.”

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “That’s just it,” he says. He cannot meet Qui-Gon’s eyes. “I’m afraid to go home.”

Qui-Gon makes a quiet, wounded sound. 

“I’m afraid I’ve taken the wrong path again, Qui-Gon. In coming with you. Now I’ve made my problems yours, and Tahl’s, when I ought to handle them on my own. I never meant to be a burden to you, I never wanted this—”

His master makes an abortive gesture, then drops his hand to rest on Obi-Wan’s bare foot, hanging out from under the thin sheets on the medical bed. 

“It is always difficult to face our great fears,” Qui-Gon says softly. “This is yours, then.”

There is nowhere to look. Obi-Wan focuses on the jacket Qui-Gon wears instead of his robes. It always surprises him to see it. A plain blue cloth, a tear on the sleeve that Qui-Gon had repaired clumsily with yellow thread one night at the table. “Yes.”

His master lifts his hand. His foot feels cold without the contact.

“Then let me tell you mine,” Qui-Gon says. “I have always been afraid of being left alone. Of not being enough to keep the ones I love near me. And now, my great fear is allowing you to get so far away from me that I cannot reach you again.” 

Quiet, for a long time. His master clears his throat.

“I have meant to ask you,” Qui-Gon says then, “who had cut your padawan braid.”

Obi-Wan starts. “Oh,” he says, stupidly. “I cut it myself, before I left the Temple. I had thought that I did not have the right to it anymore.”

His hair is longer now than it has ever been before, so long that pieces fall into his eyes and hang there, obstructing his vision. Once Tahl had tugged the ends of his hair and laughingly said she would have Qui-Gon give him a haircut. _No thank you,_ he had replied primly. _Qui-Gon cannot even manage his own hair, Master Tahl._

“I see,” Qui-Gon says. He hesitates, then continues, “I regret that I did not stay with you on your path to knighthood long enough to have that honor.”

Obi-Wan looks at the tiles on the ceiling, star-shapes the same shade of blue as the Temple’s main doors. He counts them until he feels he can speak again.

“You still could,” he says. “I still want to be a Jedi. And I want to be your padawan again.”

He willfully does not expect any response from Qui-Gon, except perhaps a sigh of regret, and a gentle reminder that things cannot be as they once were. 

But then Qui-Gon looks at him with that inscrutable, knowing look. He must see something in him that Obi-Wan cannot see in himself, because then, seeming to have arrived at a conclusion, he nods his head decisively.

“All right,” Qui-Gon says. “Then I take you as my padawan learner, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

His master braids a section of hair behind his right ear, then bands it together with a bit of thread taken from the unraveling hem of his jacket. 

Tahl’s clever fingers find the braid when she comes to send him off. 

“You are my padawan as well,” Tahl says. Her cool hands brush through his hair. “May I?” 

“Yes, master,” he replies, and she braids a section behind his left ear. 

“What the Force has brought together cannot be put asunder,” Tahl says as she ties off the thread. He can feel the depth of her concentration in the Force, like roots pushed down deep under the ground. “Remember that, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan touches the braids, right and left. “Yes,” he answers. “I will.” 

  
  
  



	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Brace yourself,” Qui-Gon says several days later as he enters Obi-Wan’s room. “You’re being released.”
> 
> Tahl is curled up in a chair, with her long legs tucked underneath her. She frowns in his direction. “Already?”
> 
> “It appears that he has met all the discharge requirements, so yes.”
> 
> “Good,” says Obi-Wan wearily. His exhaustion is evident. For days now, Qui-Gon looks at him and only sees the dark circles under his eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I made a goof in the last chapter and retconned my own story!!! It's been fixed now. 
> 
> Previously this was listed as a 25 chapter fic....but I think we'll be going a little bit past that.

“Brace yourself,” Qui-Gon says several days later as he enters Obi-Wan’s room. “You’re being released.”

Tahl is curled up in a chair, with her long legs tucked underneath her. She frowns in his direction. “Already?”

“It appears that he has met all the discharge requirements, so yes.”

“Good,” says Obi-Wan wearily. His exhaustion is evident. For days now, Qui-Gon looks at him and only sees the dark circles under his eyes. 

Obi-Wan sleeps through most of the ride back to the cottage. Tahl leans her head back and dozes as well. Qui-Gon can see evidence of strain on her face as well. It will be good to return, he thinks. We all need time to recover.

When they are only several klicks away from the cottage, Qui-Gon spies a familiar reddish-brown figure darting through the bushes. “Oh, Slip,” says Tahl despairingly. “I thought for sure he’d manage to get out somehow.”

Qui-Gon stops the landspeeder and Tahl coaxes Slip inside. Then he starts off again, this time with Slip curled underneath Obi-Wan’s chin. 

It is not long before they reach the cottage. Qui-Gon stops the landspeeder and goes to unlock the door. The remainder of the kits are waiting inside. Busybody’s forlorn eyes follow him as he steps inside. Qui-Gon stops to stroke his head comfortingly. 

“He’s back,” Qui-Gon assures him. “Just you wait and see.” Busybody is Obi-Wan’s special project. He had required feedings of ganto milk longer than any of the other kits, and has been the slowest to grow. 

He goes back outside and opens the landspeeder door on Obi-Wan’s side. “I hate to wake you, but we’re back,” he tells Obi-Wan, who startles out of his light doze and struggles to sit up. “You can go back to sleep as soon as we get you inside.”

Qui-Gon carries the boy to the room he shares with Tahl. Obi-Wan is already shaking his head in protest. 

“You shouldn’t have to—”

But Qui-Gon cuts him off. “Let us do this for you. Please.”

Obi-Wan hesitates. Then fatigue appears to set in, and he lies back down. Within minutes, his face has smoothed out again as sleep finds him. 

\---

Obi-Wan sleeps a good deal in the days that follow, generally under a blanket of tikkal kits. Qui-Gon and Tahl get rather used to walking around the cottage on bare feet, trying not to wake him. 

For the first few weeks, Obi-Wan’s knee is still swollen and stiff, with redness and bruises up and down his shin. He wears a thin bacta sleeve that must be changed daily, and his leg is kept elevated. Tahl keeps a close watch on his temperature. But Obi-Wan only remains in the bedroom for a day before requesting to return to his corner of the main room. 

“I thought you’d need the rest,” Qui-Gon objects. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll manage.”

Obi-Wan blinks up at him, eyes heavy from the medication. “I just want to be where you are,” he explains. “I miss that. It's too quiet in here.”

Qui-Gon hesitates. “All right,” he concedes, touched. He had not supposed that Obi-Wan might feel left out.

Obi-Wan’s corner of the main room is not quite the same as a bedroom. Still, Tahl has hung a pair of curtains to offer what privacy he can have, and Qui-Gon spends an afternoon hanging a set of shelves on the walls above Obi-Wan’s bed. Since then, Obi-Wan has been collecting items to put there. Qui-Gon’s lightsaber, since he has given it into Obi-Wan’s keeping, and the arkanite crystals Obi-Wan has collected from the furrows of the fields all summer long; the river stone he had presented to Obi-Wan many years ago, and a pinch-pot he had made in Tahl’s studio. 

The thrantil egg is there as well. Obi-Wan often picks it up and turns it over in his hands, running his fingers over the pattern of silver marbling across the surface.

“It’s a meditation, of sorts,” Obi-Wan had said when Qui-Gon had asked him about it. 

The bacta dressing is removed for good after the hypostitches vanish, and then Obi-Wan begins rehabilitation. Tahl helps him put on his brace and guides him inexorably through the exercises. She had been the one to accompany Obi-Wan to his therapies before being discharged from the medcenter, and now she is the one to help him point and release his foot, to assist him in raising his leg and stretching it flat. 

It is clear that Obi-Wan wishes to push himself to recover his range of motion. Qui-Gon watches as he does the recommended exercises with gritted teeth, then another set, until he collapses back on the bed. 

“Don’t overextend yourself,” Tahl tells him. “You’ll get there, padawan.” She softens her voice. “It is a slow process, I know. You wish to quicken your recovery. But the Force heals all things in its own time, Obi-Wan.”

He needs something to do, Qui-Gon realizes. Tahl frequently cajoles Obi-Wan into assisting her with her pottery, and the tikkal kits occupy his hands and lap. But there is not much to occupy the boy. 

So Qui-Gon hands over his datapad with its current HoloNet codes and lets the boy watch holodocumentaries to fill the hours, and after that there is a period where they spend the evenings crowded shoulder-to-shoulder on Obi-Wan’s narrow bed, learning about the rise and fall of the Teth dynasties until Qui-Gon inevitably falls asleep sitting up.

“Riveting stuff you’re missing,” Tahl says, putting her elbow ungently in his ribs.

“Yes, I’m sure,” he grunts in return. 

“Try to stay awake, dear,” she advises. “We’re coming up on the thirty-first century—you won’t want to miss it.”

Obi-Wan is sitting with his chin resting on his good knee. He never looks up from the datapad. Qui-Gon smothers his smile.

“Certainly not,” he replies. He crosses his arms over his chest, and when he is quite sure that Tahl is no longer paying him any attention, he closes his eyes again.

\---

Obi-Wan’s balance is shaky when he begins to walk without the brace. Qui-Gon holds his breath to see his student walk unsteadily across the cottage that first time. 

“Our fledgling is doing well,” Tahl murmurs in his ear. "No need to worry."

“I fear for him, Tahl,” Qui-Gon confesses later. “I do believe he is ready for this—and he is a capable boy—but I cannot help but worry for him.”

“Trust him to learn his own limits,” Tahl reminds him. She takes Obi-Wan through light katas she has modified for him, designed to gently stretch his unused muscles while working on his balance.

“Does it hurt?” she asks Obi-Wan halfway through the katas. Hesitantly, the boy nods. “Then you must stop. Pain is not the goal, padawan. That is not healing, but the opposite.”

“All right,” Obi-Wan concedes. Qui-Gon watches as he settles down to a slower pace, and breathes a sigh of relief.

One night not long after that, Tahl checks on the boy wrapped in a plain brown robe, her hair loose and falling down around her shoulders. Qui-Gon sees how she bends over him, even in the almost-dark of dusk, her head tilted slightly, listening for something he cannot hear. Then he follows her outside to sit on the front step. 

The air is colder than usual. She leans against his side.

“His breathing has changed,” Tahl murmurs. “He does not breathe as though he is in pain now.”

“You know him well.”

Tahl laughs into his tunics. “I don’t even know what he looks like. But I know the way his breathing quickens when he is hurting. How he likes rice but not viene beans, though he never complains when we have them for our meal. The next move he will make, when we are sparring. Is that not strange?”

“Yes,” Qui-Gon answers. His chest aches with a feeling of fullness. Completeness. Peculiar, that this feeling should come only now, here on this worn step, with only his partner and his boy inside at rest. Before, he had an entire temple of aquantanices and teachers surrounding him, and he had never felt as home there as he does right now. “It is remarkable.”

“I treasured my time with Bant,” Tahl says. “But I was relieved to let another master take on her training. I never stopped feeling as though I was holding her back from meeting her potential. But with Obi-Wan—we have something in common. I can teach him about recovering from an injury, how to compensate for a body that has changed. I have never truly felt like a master until now. He needs me, Qui-Gon.”

“We both do,” he says, and it is true. There is no other answer besides this one.

\---

Obi-Wan walks further every day. First around the cottage, then gingerly moving around the yard just outside, stepping cautiously over rocks and recesses in the ground. After that, he walks farther, until it is not so unusual to see him by some of the nearby fields.

Then one day Qui-Gon finds him in the clearing, sitting on the boulder. There are plants growing up tall and wild against the rock, now in the late-summer fullness of bloom. 

Obi-Wan is touching the blossoms, very carefully. White star-shaped petals, with a light fragrance. “You planted the seeds,” he says, when Qui-Gon silently descends to sit next to him. 

“Yes. Thank you for giving them to me.”

“You always loved them,” Obi-Wan says. “I wanted to give you something you loved to bring to your new home.” 

Qui-Gon swallows around the sudden tightness in his throat. “You were very generous with me, when I had made a decision that hurt you." 

“I only wanted to please you, that’s all.” 

Obi-Wan reaches into the pouch on his belt and pulls out an object. The thrantill egg. He takes it from Obi-Wan’s palm, touches the spiderweb of silver fissures that gilds the surface.

“I had wondered why you gave this to me,” Obi-Wan says. “I have tried, all this time, to understand. But I still don’t know.”

Qui-Gon can’t help but laugh a little. “I had not thought,” he replies gently, “that it would be so terribly difficult for you to figure out.”

Obi-Wan looks at him, a question in his eyes. 

He cannot bear to ask, Qui-Gon realizes then. He has grown so much since I left him last year. But he is still only a boy.

“Padawan," he says, "I have watched you struggle and fight and rise above every hardship the Force has sent you. I had hoped you would come to understand that I could not love you more if you were a child born of my own flesh and blood.” 

Qui-Gon puts his arms around the boy and tugs him closer, holding him loosely for fear he would not want to be so close. Obi-Wan does not pull away. Instead he silently tucks his head under Qui-Gon’s chin and stays there for a long time. So Qui-Gon goes on holding him, stroking his hair and repeating, very quietly, _I’m here. I’m here._


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He walks as far as the clearing and then sinks into the riotous tangle of starflower blooms, letting the flowers swallow him up until he is hidden underneath. The flowers here grow taller than the ones back at the Coruscant Temple, rising over his head. He likes to lie down underneath the jumbled stalks and breathe in the light fragrance that comes off the flowers. 
> 
> Obi-Wan closes his eyes and thinks of himself as a plant, roots growing into the ground here, leaves spreading. It is one of the first guided meditations a youngling is taught, to ground oneself in the living Force.

The Temple is never quite out of his thoughts. Obi-Wan can sense it, ‌always‌ ‌somewhere‌ ‌in‌ ‌the‌ ‌background‌ ‌of‌ his‌ ‌mind.‌ ‌ As he works to relearn how to walk, to find his balance, to be able to travel farther and farther from the cottage, the Temple peeks at him from behind the low-hanging clouds, half-hidden by the ridges of the mountain. 

He walks as far as the clearing and then sinks into the riotous tangle of starflower blooms, letting the flowers swallow him up until he is hidden underneath. The flowers here grow taller than the ones back at the Coruscant Temple, rising over his head. He likes to lie down underneath the jumbled stalks and breathe in the light fragrance that comes off the flowers. 

Obi-Wan closes his eyes and thinks of himself as a plant, roots growing into the ground here, leaves spreading. It is one of the first guided meditations a youngling is taught, to ground oneself in the living Force.

He stays rooted for a while, soaking up the cool moisture left in the soil from last night’s rain, spreading out underneath the topsoil and strengthening. 

The Temple hovers on the edge of his mind, hazy and rippling in the sun. Its roots are growing out towards him here in the clearing, until he feels almost as though he could reach out and join with it, connecting to a vast network of roots under the fields where Qui-Gon is working, the standing stones, up to the peak of the mountain and gently sloping down again to the cottage where Tahl is waiting. 

He hides in the shade of the starflowers and lets the suns beat down on his head until his hair is hot to the touch. 

\---

Obi-Wan stops by the fields and looks over the harvest on his way back to the cottage, filling his arms with ralish and kakrill leaves, and when he gets back he drops the vegetables on the front step beside Tahl. 

“I thought we could have tarjin stew for dinner tonight,” he explains. 

“Ask your other master,” Tahl says. “I think the spices disagreed with him the last time we made it.”

“I already did. He said to ask you. He’s working late, he says.”

“Well, in that case, I have no objections.”

He sits near her on the front step. She runs her fingers through his sun-warmed hair, then tugs on the nearest braid. 

“You have been thinking too much, padawan,” she accuses him. “You’d better tell me what’s on your mind before something overheats.”

“I feel strange,” he confesses to Tahl.. “Like I’m waiting for something. Before, everything felt—temporary. I just ate and worked and slept, and it was nothing. I was just waiting for time to pass by, that’s all. But now it’s a different kind of waiting. And I still don’t know what to do.”

Tahl frowns thoughtfully, and plucks at the tall weeds that grow up by the steps, knee-high; Qui-Gon always says he ought to cut them down, but he never does. Finally she speaks.

“I did not expect to be alive, after New Apsolon,” she begins. 

Obi-Wan glances at her profile, startled. She has rarely spoken about the events of that place, he knows, certainly not to him nor even to Qui-Gon. 

“When I was in Balog’s sensory deprivation device, I believed I would die. There was _nothing_. Nothing. Nothing to touch me, nothing for me to touch. Even the Force had abandoned me, or so I thought. And I was prepared to die. I suppose I had been waiting to die since Melida/Daan, and the death that had been interrupted before had finally come back to take me away. And then Qui-Gon came to find me, and freed me, and I was alive. And I had not expected to be.” 

Tahl has slowly braided the stems of the weeds together while speaking. She idly drops the braided stems on the step at their feet. 

“I suppose I know what you mean. When there’s a beginning instead of an end, and so many choices that you don’t know which way to turn. What does one do with a life, when you didn’t expect to have it? I still do not have an answer. The only path I knew to take was the path my heart longed for. And, oh, padawan, I wanted Qui-Gon. I wanted to never be alone again.”

He listens closely. “You still haven’t married him. I thought you would have, by now.”

“I have wanted to be certain that I am making a choice out of light, and not fear.” 

He hangs his head. The back of his neck burns with shame. “I think I made a choice like that,” he says unhappily. “Out of fear, and not light. I have doubted since then that I am meant to be a Jedi.”

His master does not chide him. She only says, “One might make a choice like that, when they feel they have no other. It is understandable. I believe the trick is not letting a choice made out of desperation become the rubric by which you rule the rest of your choices.”

Obi-Wan hasn’t thought of it that way before, and he tells his master so. 

“Well, you’re young still, for all you’ve been though,” Tahl remarks. “Now, I think you and I are coming up on a turning point.”

She is smiling, her hand on her chin. 

“What do we do with our new lives?” Tahl asks him. “The only thing wrong with you now, Obi-Wan, is that you are still waiting to live.”

\---

Obi-Wan thinks over her words over the next few days. He goes through the stretches meant to restore his former range of motion to his knee, and thinks about Tahl in the sensory deprivation box. It hurts to think she had not believed that they would not come for her in time. Surely she knows that Qui-Gon would have done anything to get to her. 

He washes the fragments of arvanite that Qui-Gon brings back in his jacket pockets from the fields and thinks of Tahl as he had first seen her on Melida/Daan, lying like a broken doll on the floor of a cell, and the gentle way Qui-Gon had swung her into his arms. Waiting to die, Tahl had said. He rather thinks he understands what she had meant. He had felt like that on Bandomeer. 

He buries himself in starflowers until his clothes are covered in petals and fragments of leaves and thinks of Tahl as she had looked when she told him he was only waiting to live.

What’s holding me back? he wonders. But he already knows. It is the memory that makes him go hot with shame to recall.

Waiting to live, Obi-Wan thinks. 

Then the first sun begins to set, and he rises.

\---

He goes to Qui-Gon, who has been working the harvesting equipment out in the south field. Qui-Gon has stopped the equipment for the evening and is picking through the turned-over furrows, looking for any missed tubers. Obi-Wan follows him down a furrow and, crouching beside him, begins to do the same.

“Get off that leg,” Qui-Gon tells him, and he drops obediently down on the seat of his pants. 

“Doesn't hurt. It’s all right.”

“Isn’t. Fetch me that tuber, right there.”

Obi-Wan plunges his hands in the soil. He locates the stray tuber and plucks it from the earth, then tosses it to Qui-Gon. He can’t seem to tell Qui-Gon straightaway, so instead he asks, “What do you think a good Jedi is like?”

Qui-Gon sits back on the heels of his boots.

“A good Jedi,” he repeats thoughtfully. “I believe that there are many paths toward goodness, padawan, almost as many paths as there are to becoming a Jedi. For goodness, you must follow your own conscience. To be a Jedi, one must only follow the Force in all things.”

“Oh.”

“You’ve done that, Obi-Wan. You have always followed the Force, for as long as I have known you.” There’s a quality to his voice that makes Obi-Wan glance over—sure enough, that’s a smile. Then Qui-Gon continues. “And what do you think the ideal Jedi should be?”

He doesn’t have to think about it at all. “I think a good Jedi is compassionate towards all living beings. Stands up for what they believe in. Guards those that require protection.”

“That is quite a tall order, Obi-Wan.”

“Well,” Obi-Wan confesses, “I was thinking of you.”

“I am honored.” Qui-Gon means it, he can tell. 

In between the clods of soil, Obi-Wan finds another piece of arvanite, the green coloring almost hidden by dirt. He picks it up and slips it in his pocket. Then he has to ask, because in all this time he has never stopped wanting to know the answer. “Do you ever wish you had stayed on Coruscant?”

“I am still a Jedi—but now I am more than that,” Qui-Gon says thoughtfully. “I had to leave to find out what those possibilities entailed. The only part I regret was my choice’s effect on you, padawan.”

He pushes his hair out of his eyes. The dirt from his hands gets caught on the strands of his hair, and he finds himself wishing he had let Qui-Gon give him a haircut after all. “I’ve been afraid that I am on the wrong path.”

“And are you still afraid of that?” Qui-Gon asks.

“Well, I think I’m closer to being on the right path now. Anyways,” Obi-Wan says. He finds that he’s grinning. “I don’t think the Force wants me to pick tubers for the rest of my life.”

Qui-Gon’s moustache twitches. He reaches out and flicks a bit of dirt off Obi-Wan’s nose. “You will have to discover what being a Jedi means to you.”

When he first arrived here, he had not meant to tell Qui-Gon about the events on Thura. But now he cannot remember his reasons for wanting to hold the memories so close to his chest. So instead he sets them free.

Obi-Wan blows a hard breath of air out. 

“About Krell,” he begins.


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obi-Wan tells her the story just as he had told it to Qui-Gon, sitting across from her at their kitchen table. 
> 
> Tahl listens closely. Not only to the words, but the way Obi-Wan pauses slightly before continuing on, the rustle of his sleeves as he folds and unfolds his hands. Krell’s conduct on Thura, told through Obi-Wan’s steady voice, sends a shiver down her arms. The rattle of Qui-Gon’s teacup against the table tells her he feels the same way.

Obi-Wan tells her the story just as he had told it to Qui-Gon, sitting across from her at their kitchen table. 

Tahl listens closely. Not only to the words, but the way Obi-Wan pauses slightly before continuing on, the rustle of his sleeves as he folds and unfolds his hands. Krell’s conduct on Thura, told through Obi-Wan’s steady voice, sends a shiver down her arms. The rattle of Qui-Gon’s teacup against the table tells her he feels the same way.

‘

“Was that the only thing Krell did in your time together to give you pause?” Tahl asks, when he has gone silent. 

Hesitation. Then, “No.”

Qui-Gon stirs beside her. “What else made you uneasy? Were there other events that you did not mention before?”

“Yes,” says Obi-Wan. “There were—other things. Only small things. Nothing, I thought, nothing that mattered.” There is a note of relief in his voice as he speaks of things Krell had said, moments when Obi-Wan had seen beneath his calm demeanor to a calculating ruthlessness. 

“I am ashamed,” he finishes. Tahl hears the hitch in his voice. Busybody slides up against her leg, then against Qui-Gon’s, anxious to be involved somehow. She strokes his back absently. 

“What for, padawan?” she presses him gently.

“That I did not stop him. That I did not speak of this to someone who could have prevented it, someone who might have saved those people. That afterwards, I did nothing, said nothing to anyone.”

Tahl feels along the Force until she reaches Qui-Gon, who always burns steadily as a white flame close by. She takes in his worry and guilt, his own uncertainty, and poses a question of her own in return: What does one say to a boy who forever takes blame away from those to whom it rightfully belongs? 

Obi-Wan is waiting for her response. She can feel how he waits, resigned to her judgement. She considers the situation, and holds it against all that she knows about her padawan. At last she speaks. 

“Your feelings of shame and guilt,” Tahl says. “What good have they done for you?”

He is surprised. “I don’t know.”

“Then why do you hold on to these feelings?”

She hears Obi-Wan swallow. “So that I won’t let it happen again.”

Tahl stands up and goes to him. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, resting her chin on his head. 

“Krell relied on your shame,” Tahl tells him. She does not need to reach for Qui-Gon to understand what had happened. “He knew your guilt and shame over your perceived culpability would keep you from telling the Council, and he used that to keep you in line. That, padawan, is anathema for a master.”

Obi-Wan shivers underneath her hands. Tahl is his master. She knows what he fears. 

“Your shame has held you back since then,” she pushes on. “Prevented you from going to the Council, to Qui-Gon to tell them what you knew. Krell manipulated you, Obi-Wan. And guilt can be a path to the dark side, just as surely as fear and anger.”

“What should I do now?” Obi-Wan asks. 

“You must inform the Council,” Qui-Gon says heavily. 

“Then I will. Whatever it takes, to make things right.” No hesitation anymore.

She knows with deadly clarity that Krell had made certain that Obi-Wan would not speak of what he knew—then pushed him further down the path, meaning to turn the boy if he could. 

But one aspect remains clear to her. Her padawan remains in the light, despite having lived under this shadow for so long.

“I am proud of you, Obi-Wan,” Tahl tells him.

Qui-Gon clears his throat. "As am I."

And through the Force she can almost see his smile.

\---

The days stretch out after the Council is informed and a councilor dispatched to their sector. Obi-Wan takes to waiting out the time by running through the katas he has developed to handle his altered sense of balance, adjusting his form here to keep his weight off his knee and compensating by leaning deeper on his other side. 

He works through each kata slowly, slowing down each movement on every repetition. Tahl brings all her senses to bear on him as she observes: The wind catching at his tunic, the crunch of grass under his booted heel as he pivots. In her mind, he feels like the still center at the heart of a storm; the winds and rain no longer coming from inside a raging heart, but from the outside. To be weathered, as in all trials. 

Obi-Wan moves through the forms until they are paths worn deep into the ground.

“He will not be with us much longer,” she tells Qui-Gon that night. “I can feel it.”

“Then it will be only you and me once more,” Qui-Gon says, chuckling. “How shall we get on?”

The Force, when it speaks to her, comes as quietly as an aikat-mouse nesting in the walls.

“I suppose,” she says thoughtfully, “that we will find a way.” 

\---

Mace Windu himself comes to speak with Obi-Wan. Tahl can feel his satisfaction ripple outward like rings on a pond when he sees the twin braids tied in Obi-Wan’s hair. He takes the boy inside his ship and speaks to him alone for several hours. At last he allows Tahl and Qui-Gon onboard. 

Her sense of Obi-Wan is like an uncertain flame, leaping up and then folding down again, flickering erratically. This has been a trial for him, she knows. 

“What happens now?” Obi-Wan asks.

“Well,” Mace says, “there will be an investigation into the matter. Do not be surprised if you should be called upon to present your report to the full Council.”

She hears Obi-Wan swallow. “Of course.”

“It may take quite a long time,” Mace warns. “This is no small charge, and the Council has processes of due diligence to follow.”

“I understand.”

“Still, this helps immeasurably. Thank you, Padawan Kenobi. And for the record—I am quite pleased that you have found your way again.”

“I am aware that this is informal apprenticeship only,” Obi-Wan says warily. “I know I cannot become a padawan again, after leaving the Order.”

“There are many routes to knighthood,” Mace remarks. “You have chosen an unusual journey, to be sure. You have surprised me many times in the course of your training. You may still be a knight yet, Obi-Wan.”

Tahl feels the sudden surprise radiating from the boy, and a dawning sense of hope.

“Master Uvain, I will be in contact with you,” Mace continues. “And there is another matter I would like to discuss with you. I know of an initiate, recently injured during routine training. I would like to send her to you so that you might teach her your methods of applying the Sokkan principals during rehabilitation.” 

The Force around her seems to find its course at long last, a flood of water settling into a deep riverbed.

“I would be honored,” Tahl replies. “Though I already have a padawan to see to knighthood first.”

“I cannot foresee that being an issue for much longer.” 

Astute as always, Tahl thinks wrly. “There is another issue I would like to have settled before you depart.”

“I’m in no great hurry to be on my way. What did you have in mind?”

“A ceremony of sorts,” Tahl tells him. “Not very far off from your usual line of work.”

She can sense his deep amusement.

“I think,” Mace says, “that can be arranged.”

\---

There is not much to their wedding. Tahl wears the same set of robes she had put on that morning. And Qui-Gon wears his usual blue coat. 

Before they leave the cottage to walk to the Temple, Obi-Wan suddenly dashes out of the door. “Just a moment,” he calls.

When he returns, he drops something in Tahl’s lap. “I almost forgot,” he says, and kisses her on the cheek. “These are for you.”

Her fingers encounter stems and petals, and a familiar scent; a wreath of starflowers, tied together with a piece of string. Qui-Gon has brought these same flowers into their home every day since they began blooming, keeping them in a small pot filled with water on their table. 

“Thank you, padawan,” she says, and Qui-Gon helps her slip the wreath on her head.

The Temple is waiting for them. Tahl can feel it opening up, expanding to peer curiously at Mace.

“Do you remember me?” Mace asks softly as he passes through the Temple doors. The tikkal kits have followed Obi-Wan to the Temple; their claws clicking quietly on the stones of the atrium.

Qui-Gon talks in her ear as they walk through the courtyard. The garden walls, he says, are covered with mouska vines, almost bare of blossoms now, but still with leaves in shades of indigo and cobalt. The spring at the heart of the courtyard bubbles quietly in its pool.

“Are you ready?” Qui-Gon asks her in a low voice.

She takes out a single starflower from her wreath, and tucks it behind his ear. “Yes. We both are.”

Qui-Gon stands at her side, and Obi-Wan stands behind him. And when Mace tells him to do so, Qui-Gon carefully places his palms flat against hers. 

_By the will of the Force, you are bound together._

Then she feels Qui-Gon kiss her on her forehead, her eyelids, her mouth. She feels the Force gather around them, and descend on them like a gust of air, scattering the last of the mouska blossoms and sending starflower petals flying from her hair. 

\---

Afterwards, Tahl takes off her wreath of starflowers and lays it gently in the reflection pool so that the flowers can have a drink of water. 

She turns to go, and Qui-Gon turns with her. He has not let go of her hand since he had been told by Mace that he might take it as her husband. 

But Obi-Wan stops at the Temple doors. She hears his boots crunch under the spread of leaves on the courtyard floor. “You go on,” he says. “I think I’ll stay here tonight.”

Qui-Gon hesitates. “Are you certain?”

“Yes,” says the boy. There is something in his voice. Tahl understands what it means. “There is something I need to do here.”

\---

They return alone to the cottage. At the front door Qui-Gon stops. 

“I never imagined,” he says. “I never thought.”

She knows what he means. 

“You are my heart,” she tells him, as she had on New Apsolon. “That has always been true.”

Qui-Gon kisses her then, and the starflower she’d tucked behind his ear brushes against the side of her face. She reaches out to the Force and finds him, right where he has always been: Waiting for her.

She steps inside his light, and joins him there.

  
  
  
  
  



	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obi-Wan walks through the Temple in the last of the daylight. 
> 
> Now that he is the only living presence inside the walls, the Temple wakes up, rubbing sleep from its eyes and turning to him in welcome.

Obi-Wan walks through the Temple in the last of the daylight. 

Now that he is the only living presence inside the walls, the Temple wakes up, rubbing sleep from its eyes and turning to him in welcome.

The first sun sets, then the second.  And the Temple comes alive. 

Like wind stirring up a quieted fire, the Temple sparks awake, with birdsong and the rustling sounds of the clawmouse nesting pairs that burrow in the walls, with browned and drying mouska leaves turning over to reveal the bright red coloring underneath. 

A bright, eager sensation pulls him along, whispering,  _ See this, see this,  _ tugging at his sleeve for him to pause and observe the lichens growing along the curve of the fountain in the courtyard, or the fire-ferns with the bronzed fronds that curl back at his light touch. 

_ Yes, yes, I see, _ he says in response, and he allows himself to be led through the corridors, watching and delighting in all that the Temple wishes to show him. The tikkal kits follow at his heels, stopping now and then to investigate an orbweaver web or enticing crack in the stone walls. 

_ I belong here _ , Obi-Wan realizes.  _ I always have.  _

He follows the bright, curious sensation through the hallways and towards the archives. He remembers how the Temple had brought him here not long after his arrival, to the archives and Tahl, who had always welcomed him in her domain. 

Inside the archives, he is guided to a small wooden box on a shelf, with carvings etched across the lid. When he opens the box, he is not quite surprised to find a cache of raw lightsaber crystals and polished saber components. The hilts and crystals from the ancient Jedi’s lightsabers, carefully preserved and left behind for whomever would come afterwards.

An eager, insistent pull at his sleeve.  _ Yes, _ he says.  _ Yes _ ,  _ I see. _

He takes the box and tucks it under his arm thoughtfully, and continues on with his wanderings.

He picks his way across the treacherous rubble and stone stairs to the observation tower, and look up at the disappearing sunlight. He thinks of the Rumalidon texts Tahl had shown him, detailing the days and lives of the ancient order here. There had been a word for the period between the second sun setting and the first moon rising.  _ Hartha _ , the dusklight, a time for solitude and communtion. 

He folds his legs underneath him. The tikkals follow suit, curling around him and resting their black noses against their paws. Busybody rests his chin on Obi-Wan’s knee and watches him curiously. He can feel the brightness of their lives, sleepy and satisfied to sit closely by him.

_ This is the path I chose. _

He opens the carved wooden box and sorts through the lightsaber components carefully, setting aside what seems to call to him; an emitter-piece, a long length of chromium with an edge like the crests of waves that reminds him of Qui-Gon’s saber, power cells and ignition buttons. He chooses a tapered hilt that reminds him of Tahl’s saber, and begins to fit them together, his hands moving on instinct. 

He stops once the components are fitted together. There is only one piece missing, but though he touches many saber crystals and holds several in his palms, none feel right. 

Obi-Wan blinks up at the first moon, which has risen during the time he has spent here. He tests the saber hilt in his hand, feeling the weight of it. 

And from elsewhere in the Temple, he feels that bright, curious voice calling to him.

\---

He follows the soundless voice through the twisting halls, spiraling inward to the heart of the Temple like the labyrinth of a snail’s shell.

_ Where are you? _ he calls in return, and the Temple beckons him further, until he comes at last to the main hall.

He steps into the atrium, the wide circular room where the lapis blue doors open up to the outside world, its ruined ceilings showing him how the moons rise above a tangled snarl of dried mouska vines that have grown over the broken tiles of the roof. 

_ I’m here, I’m here. Where are you? _

The Temple takes a breath and holds it. He tastes the stillness of the air. 

And in his pocket, he can feel a burning like an ember glowing against his side. 

He fumbles to reach it, and his hands close around something smooth and hard. The arvanite crystals, fragments he has collected since he came to this world, given to him by Qui-Gon who finds them in the furrows of the fields. 

_ You? _ he asks, and he feels an insistent pull in return. 

He wraps his fingers around the arvanite, and focuses the Force inward, steadying himself.

Then he opens his mind and reaches out to what lies beyond. 

\---

First he touches the Temple itself, the rampant life that climbs over the walls and builds nests in the hollows, the spring that runs underneath the Temple floors; he reaches beyond the Temple and encounters a light-filled river. 

He seems to walk along the river for a while, until he reaches a place where the Force resonates. The place feels familiar, a reassuring green, cool like dew-damped grass under his bare feet.  Then it comes to him. The standing stones, the remnants of the Whills temple. He thinks of the arvanite stones as Qui-Gon had shown him, the rich green incised with darker shades and opalescent blacks.  Here, the Force is refracted and focused, expanding far beyond his own ability to broadcast. 

A nexus.

Obi-Wan opens his eyes and turns the arvanite crystal around in his hand. There is a dark opalized discoloration in this one, as in the others he has found in the fields. And, he recalls, in the standing stones as well. He focuses on the shadow in the crystal, narrowing his attention to that area. 

No Jedi have lived on this planet in centuries, no guardian or priestess of the Whills have been here to keep the nexus open, to allow the Force to move clearly through the energy-lines.  Now the energy-lines are sluggish and muddied from disuse, blocking the nexus. 

He searches around until he has found the barrier, but then hesitates. He is not quite sure how best to untangle the lines here. He pushes up against the barrier with his mind, but his own life-force is only taken into the nexus and entangled along with the other energies.

Then he seems to hear Qui-Gon’s voice in his ear.  _ Make the connection _ , his master reminds him, and along with the words come a flash of memory: The apoca seedlings, and how he had reviatzlied them.

_ Oh, I see,  _ he answers, realizing, and he opens the link and lets the living Force rush through.

The Force floods through the nexus, pushing up against the barrier and scouring the snarls and tangles.  He feels the blockage shatter and give way. 

Then the Force breaks through with a surge of joy, and Obi-Wan is taken along with it. 

\---

He lets the Force take him along, unresisting, caught in the swirling eddies and cascades. He is pulled along the energy-lines, and the Force seems to sing around him as it moves. 

_ Steady now,  _ Obi-Wan tells it, laughing at the clear boundless joy it takes in plunging through the lines. He grabs hold of the arvanite and lets the stones focus his energy, sending it up and outward.

Somewhere nearby is the clearing, and he finds that he is linked to that as well, to the boulder with its flecks of arvanite and the meadow of starflowers. He touches the place with his mind, and life springs up, flowing down through the connection. He can almost see how the starflowers ripple up the mountain and overflow into the Temple itself, following the lines of the nexus. 

And then he is touching the mountains themselves, first the ridge where the Temple rests, then across the ranges, and beyond even that; he flies up the peak and into the night sky, beyond that past the atmosphere, then touching the nearby satellites, then the planets that make up this system with their asteroid-rings gleaming in the null of space. Life, life everywhere.

The Force clears, and settles. 

And when it is calmed, he comes back down.

\---

He returns slowly. 

He is still connected to the standing stones, to the Temple; he can feel his link to the nexus shimmering like dark leaves after a rainfall at the edge of his mind, right alongside to Qui-Gon’s green-gold aura and Tahl’s warm bronze light. 

He opens his eyes.  On either side, Qui-Gon and Tahl sit next to him, their eyes closed and palms out, meditating beside him. Their presence holds him steady until he regains his balance.

In his hands, he holds the hilt of a lightsaber. 

Inside the hilt, a pure arvanite crystal sings out his name. 

And above him, the ceilings of the Temple are tapestried with a living ceiling of green growing life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for walking through this story with me, friends. I had been dreaming about this idea for a year before finally setting it down, and now I'm almost at the end. There will be a short epilogue to follow. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> If you love Qui-Gon/Tahl, consider joining me for a Qui/Tahl fic and art challenge in February 2021!! Details are at my tumblr @ outpastthemoat (dot) tumblr (dot) com.


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Temple has changed. There is no trace of autumn now in the green tangle of vines growing over the broken Temple roof, so thick with leaves that the sunlight only comes through in small patches. 
> 
> And there is a peace on Obi-Wan’s face that had not been there the night before. 

Qui-Gon rises out of his meditation. He scarcely knows where to look first.

The Temple has changed. There is no trace of autumn now in the green tangle of vines growing over the broken Temple roof, so thick with leaves that the sunlight only comes through in small patches. 

And there is a peace on Obi-Wan’s face that had not been there the night before. 

“You’ve been busy,” Qui-Gon observes, tilting his head to look up at the greenery that now makes up the ceiling. He holds up a hand to catch the dappled light. The mouska vines are blossoming as though it is early spring. White petals drift to the ground, spinning lazily through the still air.

A single dimple appears on his padawan’s cheek. “It was a long night.”

Tahl raises her head as well, letting the green light fall upon her face. “I can feel the Force flowing through this place,” she breathes. “You brought the Temple back to life, Obi-Wan.”

“It was all your teaching,” Obi-Wan says. “Yours and Qui-Gon’s. You showed me how it might be possible. I never had much talent for the living Force.”

Qui-Gon can’t help it—he laughs, much to his padawan’s bewilderment. “You have always been strong in the living Force,” he tells Obi-Wan. “You made a new friend on every new world we visited, you negotiated peace in disputes where even I could not get the others to agree. Animals find you wherever you go and eat out of your hand. How could you never suspect that you might have a talent for the living Force?”

Obi-Wan is looking at him in astonishment. “I never thought of it like that.”

Tahl is running her fingers along the glossy leaves of glida lilies that have sprung up overnight in the edges of the stone walls. “The fragrance is heavenly. Do you suppose you could organize some similar floral arrangements in the archives?” 

“I’ll do my best,” Obi-Wan promises her. Qui-Gon’s gaze is caught by the lightsaber held tightly in his padawan’s hands. 

“May I have the honor?” he asks, and Obi-Wan passes him the hilt. When he presses the ignition button, a deep green blade emerges. 

He can feel the energy of the blade, eager as the wind that billows through the grasses on the hills below the Temple, but steady as a mountain. 

  
  
  


“You’ve changed,” Qui-Gon says quietly.

“Not so very much,” Obi-Wan argues. “I’m no different than I’ve always been. I’m still your padawan.”

“Not for much longer, I should think.”

Obi-Wan takes a breath, but he does not disagree. Qui-Gon holds the saber above his padawan’s shoulder, level to his chin.

“By the will of the Force, by the right of the Order,” he murmurs, and Obi-Wan’s braid falls into his waiting hand. He passes the blade to Tahl, and she speaks the same words and shears off the short braid on the other side.

Tahl touches the braid lightly. “I am very pleased, Obi-Wan, that you found your way.”

The green light, moving in patterns of shadow across the floor of the atrium, the fragrance of starflowers drifting up from the hills outside. He has dreamed of this, dreamed of such a moment but had never thought it anything but a fantasy.

He wraps the chestnut braid around his fingers. It is just long enough to wind around his wrist.

“I suppose soon you’ll be off on your own,” Qui-Gon says wistfully. 

There is an impish look in Obi-Wan’s eyes, under that stray lock of hair falling in his face. 

“Not so very far away, I think,” he says. “I belong here. With the Temple. And with you.”

It is only then that Qui-Gon recognizes what he means.

“You are the guardian,” he realizes. “The Temple chose you.”

“It needs me,” Obi-Wan says with certainty. “Come, and I’ll show you.”

He holds out his hands expectantly. Tahl takes one, and Qui-Gon takes the other.

He can still see the green light streaming down from above when he closes his eyes. Then the living Force wraps around him and lifts him up.

There is Tahl, steady and white-gold, their connection to each other nearly boundless. And now there is his sense of Obi-Wan, much the same as always, but with a new added depth to him, like roots sinking deep in the ground. He can sense Obi-Wan’s link to the nexus, the current of energy that flows from the Temple like a river running over a cliff. There is more, much more beyond that, if only Qui-Gon can catch a glimpse...

_There’s more to see,_ Obi-Wan calls from up ahead. _Come on._

_Show me the way,_ he responds, and as he watches, Tahl and Obi-Wan disappear over the edge of the cliff. 

Then the living Force beckons, and Qui-Gon leaps after them.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in
> 
> Spring comes(no-  
> one  
> asks his name)
> 
> a mender  
> of things
> 
> with eager  
> fingers(with  
> patient  
> eyes)re
> 
> -new-
> 
> ing remaking what  
> other  
> -wise we should
> 
> have  
> thrown a-
> 
> way(and whose
> 
> brook  
> -bright flower-  
> soft bird  
> -quick voice loves
> 
> children  
> and sunlight and
> 
> mountains)in april(but  
> if he should  
> Smile)comes
> 
> nobody'll know
> 
> \-- e e cummings

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was partially inspired by a thread on the QuiObi Writing Discord! Our brainstorming session included the plotting of much angst....I feel like this will turn out more hopeful than planned :)


End file.
